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 ...

As the summer goes on, I'm spending more and more time working with BartPe. I would like to be able to load a BartPE ISO onto some flash drives, and boot from there. What used to be a bit of a black ...

If your Chromebook does not boot into the operating system anymore, you can create a recovery USB flash drive and use it to reinstall a copy of Chrome OS on your computer. Google provides a tool ...

John O’Brien’s PC can’t boot from a USB drive. Every PC needs a way to boot into something other than the installed operating system. Removable boot media allows you to repair your Windows ...

If you want to install Windows from scratch, you have two choices -- you can install the OS from a CD/DVD or from a USB flash drive. The latter is the better option, especially as optical drives are ...

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 ...

As someone who extensively writes about all things Windows, I find myself installing the Windows operating system quite often. Most of the time, these installations are geared toward setting up ...

A bootable Mac OS X thumb drive comes in handy when you need to troubleshoot OS issues for yourself, your family, or your friends. It’s also extremely useful for keeping your basic setup consistent ...

Update: Before you try all of this, you may want to try using WinToFlash, a utility designed to create a bootable Windows flash drive for Windows XP/Vista/7/Server. If this works for you, you can skip ...

Flash drives are convenient for making backups of files as well as copying data from one computer to another. These small memory devices are portable and only require ...