Create a bootable USB Flash Recovery Drive

Note: If your computer comes with a recovery partition pre-installed by the manufacturer, you will be able to select an option to copy the recovery partition from the PC to the recovery drive. If this option is enabled, you should put a check mark in this option to include the manufacturers recovery partition on your recovery drive.

Make sure you have a USB flash drive that is at least 256MB inserted into the computer and then click on the Next button. You will now be presented with a screen where you will prompted to select the USB flash drive that you would like to use for the recovery drive.

Keep in mind that if you do copy the recovery partition, you'll need at least a 16GB USB flash drive. Without it, you can make do with just 256MB. Click Next to continue.

Warning: The USB flash drive that you selected will be erased. Please back up any important files that are on the drive before continuing.

Select the USB flash drive that you wish to use and then click on the Next button. You will now be shown a warning stating that your USB flash drive will be erased.

If you are ready, click on the Create button and Windows will turn your USB flash drive into a bootable recovery drive.

When it done you will be shown a screen that states that the recovery drive has been created.

You can now remove the flash drive and store it in a safe place.

In the future if you need to use the recovery drive to start Windows, you can insert it into a Windows 8 machine and boot off of it. If you are unable to to boot off the USB drive then you will need to go into your BIOS and enable it as the first boot device. Once your computer starts booting up off the USB Recovery Drive, you will be presented with a screen asking what keyboard layout you would like to use.

Select the keyboard layout you wish to use by left-clicking on it once. You will now be at a screen where you can choose an option to perform.

You can either choose to Continue booting Windows 8, Turn off your PC, or use a variety of tools to Troubleshoot your Windows 8 installation. As you most likely are using the recovery drive because Windows 8 is not starting correctly, click on the Troubleshoot option. This will open the Troubleshoot screen that contains various tools that you can use to repair Windows 8.

The Refresh your PC option allows you to reinstall Windows 8 while retaining your data. More information about this process can be found in this tutorial:

How to reinstall Windows 8 while keeping your data using Refresh your PC

The Reset your PC options will perform a clean install of Windows 8 on your computer. This option will remove all the data on your computer, so please be sure to backup your data before performing this option. More information about the reset process can be found here:

How to perform a clean install of Windows 8 using Reset your PC

If you click on the Advanced options choice a new screen will open that contains other tools that you can use to troubleshoot Windows 8.