I used the portable build, the December 2025 build and finally the February 2026 build of Rufus to burn the verified copy of Tails onto my USB. When clicking on my USB device on the Windows 11 recovery window, it just boots into my hard disk W11. When I tried on an older PC, the problem was found - ‘Missing OS’.
How do I solve the problem of a ‘Missing OS’ in the Tails image?
The message is probably your BIOS complaining that it can’t boot from your USB stick. The cause may be that the burn failed, that the ISO image your burnt was broken (most probably the download didn’t finish) or that your BIOS is just unable to read your USB stick model. The latter is not very common, but it happens sometimes.
Also note that on March 26th Tails 7.6 was published. I recommend that you try again with the latest version (also verify it after download, as described in the 2nd step of the guide), and if it fails again try with a different USB stick.
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