Last Updated on August 3, 2017 by Dave Farquhar
It’s easier to boot a Lenovo Thinkcentre off USB than some other types of computers. But if you’ve never had to, it might be hard to figure out. Here’s how.
First, insert your USB drive. The front ports are more convenient for this, and they work fine. So I recommend you use one of those.
Next, reboot the computer.
At the initial power-up screen with the Lenovo logo on it, hit Enter. The computer will flash a couple of other screens at you, and then give you a prompt. At the prompt, hit F12 to choose a boot order. The options will include your hard drive, your DVD drive if you have one, and the USB drive. Use the arrow keys to select the USB drive, assuming that’s the one you want, and press Enter. The computer will dutifully boot off USB, as long as your drive is bootable.
If you want to boot off a different drive, of course you can pick that drive from the menu instead.
That’s all there is to it when you want to boot a Lenovo Thinkcentre off USB. I’ve seen computers that made it quite a bit harder than that.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.