How to boot your computer from a USB flash drive.
Normally when you turn your computer on it’ll automatically boot from the hard drive. But sometimes you’ll want to interrupt that process and have system boot from a bootable USB drive instead.
Unfortunately there isn’t a standard method to get a Windows PC to boot from your USB drive.
Boot From USB Drive
To boot your PC from a USB flash drive, you’ll typically need to access your computer’s ‘one-time boot menu’ or adjust the ‘boot order’ in the BIOS/UEFI settings.
Most computer and motherboard manufacturers assign a specific ‘hotkey’ to quickly access the one-time boot menu.
To use it, simply power on your computer and immediately begin repeatedly pressing the designated key on your keyboard. This will interrupt the normal boot process and offer up a menu listing the bootable devices attached to your PC.
Finding Your Hotkey:
The most reliable way to find the correct hotkey for your specific device is to consult the documentation that came with your computer or motherboard. If you don’t have the physical manual, check the manufacturer’s support website for your model.
Common Hotkeys (Examples):
While this isn’t an exhaustive list, here are some commonly used hotkeys:
- Dell: F12
- HP: F9 or Esc
- Lenovo: F12, F8, or F11
- Acer: F12, F9, or Esc
- Asus: Esc or F8
- MSI: F11 or F12
- Gigabyte: F12 or F2
Important Note: If you’re using a laptop you might need to hold down the Fn key while tapping the the relevant hotkey.
Use Windows Recovery To Boot From USB
The reasons why you might want to boot from a USB drive are many and varied, but if you can get Windows to start, then you could use the built in recovery options to set Windows to reboot to a USB flash drive.
Click the Start button and then type “recovery options“. Click on Recovery options (system settings).
Recovery Options
On the Recovery Options screen click the Restart Now button.
Choose An Option
After your computer has restarted it’ll be in recovery mode and will open at the “Choose An Option” screen.
To boot from a USB drive, click “Use a device” and then on the next screen, click the USB drive that you want to boot from.
Your computer will re-start and when it does it should be booting from your USB flash drive.
If You Can’t Get To The Windows Desktop.
You might be looking to boot from a USB drive because you can’t actually get your computer to start up properly. Maybe you can’t get to the desktop.
You can still use Windows recovery to boot from a flash drive, even if you can’t get Windows to boot into the desktop.
If you can at least get to the Windows login screen, you still have a chance.
Hold down the SHIFT key on your keyboard. Then click the power button in the lower right corner of the login screen.
Keep holding the SHIFT key down and click on Restart. You have to click the Restart option, not Shutdown or anything else.
That should restart your computer into the “Choose an option” screen we looked at earlier.
Summary.
There are many reasons why you might want to boot your PC from a USB flash drive. Probably the most common are to troubleshoot/repair a Windows system, or to install Windows from installation media.
But you can also use it bootable USBs to run live Linux distros, update motherboard UEFI/BIOS and to scan for malware outside of the regular OS.
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Create a Windows recovery drive for those times when you really can’t get the PC to even boot up.
