First off, a little context. I'm a 30+ year Mac user and I just bought my first PC in decades. I'm no stranger to Windows and Linux, but haven't used them as a desktop OS for about 15 years. My ...

For a long time, Microsoft didn’t sell Windows install media in the form of bootable USB flash drives. Instead, it prefered to stick to old-school DVD media, despite the fact that many notebooks today ...

Running Windows completely off of a USB flash drive is quite handy if you want to try a newer or older version of Windows without affecting your current system. The USB drive can also serve as a ...

Several days ago, we covered where to download a Windows 10, 8.1, or 7 ISO image file, but a common question is what do you do once the image is downloaded? The answer is make a bootable USB drive out ...

Here's why it's recommended for every Windows user to have a Windows 10 boot drive around at all times. You can troubleshoot an old PC at your home. In addition to common issues to look for, there’s ...

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 ...

Keeping a bootable USB of the current operating system is just a basic tier of protection. It brings a false sense of confidence that one day, when your computer cannot load the OS, you can use the ...

In the old days, people commonly booted their computer from CDs and even floppy disks, but those days are long gone. Now, if you need to troubleshoot your PC, boot from a different version of the ...

Every operating system has a finite shelf life, especially when hardware failures are involved. Learn how to plan for a Windows disaster to get back up and running in short order. The other day my ...

Plug the USB flash drive into your PC and use the Recovery Media Creator tool create Windows 10 recovery drive. (The easiest way to find this tool is to type Create a recovery drive in the search box ...