We all need to start from scratch sometimes and if you're building a new PC, chances are you'll need to learn how to make a bootable USB drive. This will enable you to boot your PC directly from a USB ...

Every Windows PC usually starts from the built-in hard drive, as the term “Windows PC” implies. This is because the Microsoft operating system is not anchored in or with the hardware, but is installed ...

There are a bunch of tools that let you load an operating system onto a USB flash drive, allowing you to boot from that drive and either run or install the OS. But most of those tools are only ...

Rufus is a free, portable utility that creates bootable USB flash drives from ISO files. As of 2026, the latest version is Rufus 4.13 — and it’s faster and more capable than ever, with built-in ...

The process of downloading and installing a fresh copy of Windows 10 is pretty straightforward. But did you know that you also can run Windows right from a USB flash drive? Now it does sound like a ...

Want to try or install a Linux distribution (distro) on your computer? Making a bootable flash drive with an image of the distro is the simplest route these days. I've done it dozens of times, and ...

I am in charge of upgrading a small computer lab from Windows XP to Windows 7 and I'm having a hell of a time with it. One quirk of these computers is that they don't have a DVD drive, so I've made an ...

In a move that may speed the death of floppy disk drives, M-Systems on Tuesday said its USB flash memory storage device can now start a PC's boot-up process. M-Systems said that if users plug the ...

When your Windows PC refuses to boot or crashes unexpectedly, a rescue USB can be your ultimate lifeline. Packed with tools like Hiren’s BootCD PE, it lets you repair boot issues, recover lost data, ...

A friend of mine asked me to fix his USB flash drive. It's an HP 4GB drive. My notebook is running Windows 7 64-bit. When I connected the drive to my computer, Windows installed the drivers but it ...