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 ...

I recently bought a new 1 TB NVMe SSD (970 Evo Plus) to upgrade from my current 256 GB M.2 SATA SSD. The current disk is LUKS encrypted using the default options were when I originally installed ...

Knowing how to boot from your laptop's disc drive is essential. Hard drive crashes and viruses can put your company's data at risk, and various programs designed to rescue files or remove malware are ...

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 ...

Like Lion (OS X 10.7) before it, Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) doesn’t ship on a disc—it’s available only as an installer app downloadable from the Mac App Store ...

Accessing the boot menu in OS X is a simple key press, though in some cases it requires specific timing in order to work. Topher, an avid Mac user for the past 15 years, has been a contributing author ...

[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).] ...

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 ...

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 ...