If the quick menu doesn't work, you must manually change the "Boot Order" in the system BIOS. This tells the computer to look at the USB drive before it looks at the hard drive.

Just when they were about to give up, John remembered a crucial detail. He asked Alex to check if his laptop's BIOS was set to support USB booting. Alex checked the BIOS settings and found that the "USB boot" option was disabled. John instructed Alex to enable it, save the changes, and try booting from the USB drive again.

However, things didn't go smoothly. When Alex tried to boot from the USB drive, his laptop wouldn't recognize it. John suspected that the issue might be with the BIOS settings or the USB drive itself. He walked Alex through the process of checking the BIOS settings, ensuring that the USB drive was properly created, and even tried a different USB port.

USB 2.0 port (usually black) during installation, as Windows 7 often lacks native drivers for USB 3.0 (blue) ports, which can cause the setup to fail. Microsoft Community Hub +5 2. Creating the Bootable USB You can use third-party tools or built-in Windows commands to prepare your media: Rufus (Recommended)

That's when John remembered a trick he had learned from a colleague. He instructed Alex to create a bootable USB drive with the Windows 7 installation files. John guided Alex through the process, which involved downloading the Windows 7 ISO file, creating a bootable USB drive using a tool like Rufus, and then setting the USB drive as the first boot device in the laptop's BIOS settings.