How to fix your PC if it does not boot using an Android mobile

If your computer’s operating system won’t start and you don’t have a recovery USB, don’t despair, since your Android mobile will be a solution for Windows to be operational again.

Suddenly you get to your computer, hit the power button and the operating system is not able to load. It may be that a virus has done its thing or that the hard drive is not very good.

The problem with this is that we cannot create a recovery disk at this time, something basic to get our operating system back up and running.

Well, if you have an Android phone or tablet that is compatible with the USB On-The-Go systembetter known as OTG, more than likely you can plug it into your computer and get it to boot up again.

Let’s see what options we have at our disposal.

bootable USB

We can use our device Android as if it were a bootable USBusing the OTG system to ensure that the computer is restored in the best way.

For the repair, we may need a dedicated recovery disk or just a fresh version of your operating system.

If we are not sure, it is always best to opt for a recovery disk. However, if you are not sure, go for the recovery disk.

For that we are going to use the Android terminal, where we must put a disk image iso file, something that we can download from Microsoft itself by entering this link. As we shall see, the third option is Download Windows 11 Disc Image (ISO).

Once we have this ISO file saved on the phone, we need a tool to burn it. To carry out this task there are quite a few apps, but we opted for ISO 2 USB.

With this application we will be able to make a bootable pen drive with android. For that we must perform the following steps:

• First we must connect a USB storage device to our phone through an OTG adapter, either for USB-C or for Micro USB, depending on which one our smartphone has.
• Once we have it, we connect the usb drive to otg adapterwhich is previously connected to our smartphone.
• At the moment we run ISO 2 USB.
• We touch the button that says To select.
• Now we must choose usb drive.
• We continue pressing on the second To select.
• Now we must choose ISO file that we have downloaded before.
• Immediately, we hit Start so that, in this way, it begins to write the data.

Initially it will not take long to complete this process.

Once you’re done, we remove the USB and now we can connect it to the computer to start the recovery process from it, changing boot order in bios so that the first thing to be read is the USB and thus boot the system that we have installed on it

Bootable Linux environment

If you don’t have a USB memory at hand or no OTG cable, you can always opt for another solution, although we warn you that you must have the phone rooted.

Once we know this, the application that we are going to use is DriveDroid, which allows us to start the PC directly through a USB cable using any ISO or IMG file stored on our phone.

As we have already mentioned before it is necessary that the terminal is rooted. Even then, some phones may not work depending on kernel quirks.

Once you have this clear, the steps to follow are really simple:

• We run DriveDroid and we give root permissions.
• Next, we click Download and select an operating system to download. Since we are trying to recover our PC, we must choose boot-repair-disk or CloneZilla.
• Now we wait for the download to complete.
• At this moment we must select ISO.
• Next, we have to choose USB storage standard, read-only USB storage, or CD-ROM (this will determine how the ISO behaves on the computer).
• It’s the moment connect the Android device to our PC and reboot.
• We must put on the computer that when restarting it reads a USB device, which will make the system start from our phone.

Of all the steps that we have mentioned, you only have to be careful when choosing the ISO to download and be clear if your operating system is 32 or 64 bits.

This issue is more than clear with Windows 11, but in lower versions (although most are 64-bit today) there may still be some doubt.

Install Windows from a smartphone

DriveDroid has the ability to install Windows from our Android phone or tablet. The problem is that we must get the Paid version to be able to do it, which is worth 2.39 euros. In this way we could install Windows directly from the smartphone without relying on any files.

There are two possible ways to install Microsoft operating system on the computer using the mobile, but having the ISO file Windows installation.

For this we can use the same two programs that we have seen before, both ISO 2 USB and DriveDroid.

The two options available are:

• From ISO 2 USB: It allows us to burn an ISO file directly to a USB flash drive via USB-OTG. We must follow the same steps that we did to create a bootable USB, but choose an installation file of the operating system, which will be downloaded from the same website.
• DriveDroid: As we have mentioned above, with the paid version you can add support for Windows 10 installation images. Everything is done the same, the only thing you choose is the installation of the operating system.

Now you know how you can make that computer that won’t start up work thanks to your mobile terminal with the Android operating system.

You will be able to generate a boot drive, a USB that serves the same purpose or, in those two same ways, make Windows reinstall itself on the computer and thus everything starts from scratch.

Now all you have to do is choose which of all the options is the one that best suits your problem or your way of trying to solve it. Whatever it is, you can tell us on social networks which one you have opted for and how it went.