It seems that the SD card slot in the new MacBook Pros does count as a bootable device; all you have to do is install OS X onto a card, set it as the default boot device, and you’re good to go. Why ...

An optical disc (CD, DVD) or USB drive that contains a bootable program that takes control of the computer. Computers are typically configured to look for the OS on a CD or DVD first and then the hard ...

Bootable disc image files may contain all the data necessary to create a disc from which computers can boot, but if you want them to work, you can't just burn them to a disc the way you would regular ...

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 ...

It's easy to make boot disks on old Macs for older hardware, but as the years have gone on, it's gotten a little more difficult. Here's how to make classic Mac OS 9 and early Mac OS X boot media on ...

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 ...

[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).] ...

I recently said that an MS-DOS boot disk couldn’t be created in Windows 2000. As several readers pointed out, this isn’t quite true. An MS-DOS boot disk can be created using files located on the ...

Using a Windows XP upgrade CD The Boot Camp installation instructions claim that a valid full Windows XP SP2 disc is required and that upgrade discs cannot be used ...

If your Mac is having problems, macOS has multiple keyboard combinations that you can hold to recover your system, start in safe mode, run diagnostics, and more. Here's how to use them. Apple's macOS ...