Use Your Bootable USB Drive

Plug your Beamo USB drive into any available USB port on your computer. Shut down the computer completely (don't restart — fully shut down).

Turn on your computer and immediately start pressing the boot menu key for your manufacturer (see the table below). Press it repeatedly until the boot menu appears.

If the boot menu key isn't working — whether you keep missing the timing, the key doesn't seem to do anything, or your keyboard isn't detected early enough — you can boot from USB directly through Windows instead. This method works on any Windows 10 or Windows 11 PC and doesn't require pressing any keys at startup.

Option A — From within Windows:

1. Make sure your Beamo USB drive is plugged in
2. Open Settings → System → Recovery (Windows 11) or Settings → Update & Security → Recovery (Windows 10)
3. Under Advanced startup, click "Restart now"
4. After restart, choose "Use a device"
5. Select your Beamo USB drive from the list — your PC will reboot directly into it

Option B — From the sign-in screen:

1. Hold the Shift key and click the Power → Restart button on the sign-in screen
2. When the blue recovery menu appears, choose "Use a device" and select your USB drive

In the boot menu, select your Beamo USB drive. It may appear as "USB HDD", "USB Storage Device", or show the brand name of the USB drive.

USB not showing up? Try a different USB port — preferably a USB 2.0 port (usually black, not blue). You may also need to enable Legacy Boot or CSM in your BIOS settings.

Screen is black after selecting USB? Try adding "nomodeset" to the boot parameters. At the GRUB menu, press 'e', find the line starting with 'linux', and add 'nomodeset' before 'quiet splash'.