How can I tell if a drive can be used to boot from? For ages I couldn't work out why my P133 machine wouldn't boot of CDs even when the option was checked in the BIOS. Then I realised it was the drive ...

In last month's column, I described the hurdles that Mac OS X puts in your way when you try to create a bootable disc, especially a custom bootable CD, DVD or flash drive. I offered various solutions ...

[Editor’s note: This article is part of our series of articles on installing and upgrading to Lion (OS X 10.7). We also have a complete guide to installing and upgrading to Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8).] ...

When your PC stops booting, a boot drive is the electronic version of a defibrillator. If you can boot your PC, you can detect bad memory, chase bad sectors, change passwords, and recover data … all ...

I’ve written quite a bit about installing Lion (OS X 10.7) and about the benefits of creating a bootable installer disc or drive. While the latter process isn’t prohibitively difficult, it’s still a ...

Having bootable media ready can be a real lifesaver when you need to do a clean installation of Windows. Thankfully, it's easy to set that up. There are two main ways to create bootable media for a ...

Windows XP takes up relatively little space on a hard drive and uses fewer system resources than recent versions of Windows. For computers with limited memory and processing power as well as no ...

Load up a USB drive with the right software, and you’ll have a complete toolkit to restart, troubleshoot, and repair Windows PCs. I’ve learned to keep a collection of useful Windows tools and repair ...

Thanks to the flexibility of Linux, it's possible to run the OS directly from a USB drive, but is that the right approach? Here are the pros and cons.

I harbor no nostalgia for Mac OS 9. Aside from a couple of old games, I never even think about using OS 9 anymore. With one exception...I long for OS 9's simplicity in creating bootable drives and ...