There are plenty that will boot/install Linux just fine but won’t do a nice clean install of Windows 11.
Modern Thinkpad E16 (AMD) is one of them, a clean USB won’t work, it will always stick at not finding required drivers.
You need to inevitably create a USB install from the MS USB Media Creation tool, running on the machine itself from the included crapware Windows - to get an installer USB that will work.
Different if you’re just pushing a wim over the network from endpoint/scm, but it’s basically broken for local users.
Just install it in a VM. I’ve done this before to force Windows 10 to install on a USB stick, you can pass a VM an entire physical drive to use instead of a virtual hard disk and install to that SSD directly from the VM (just kill the VM and reboot into the windows partition when the VM tries to reboot to the windows installation). I’m sure if you passed the VM a USB created with Rufus you could install from that as well.
I had this issue at work, I was able to fix it by using the windows media creation tool instead of just writing the iso to the drive. Not sure why that worked, but it has every time so far.
rufus doesn’t help with preloads that you don’t want to or can’t, for whatever reason, overwrite with a ‘clean’ install.
If os can’t be installed off a usb then that means linux can’t either, which makes it a pretty sad machine to spend money on.
So it must be a work or school device then? Which users wouldn’t be installing OS on anyways with it being handled through IT.
There are plenty that will boot/install Linux just fine but won’t do a nice clean install of Windows 11.
Modern Thinkpad E16 (AMD) is one of them, a clean USB won’t work, it will always stick at not finding required drivers.
You need to inevitably create a USB install from the MS USB Media Creation tool, running on the machine itself from the included crapware Windows - to get an installer USB that will work.
Different if you’re just pushing a wim over the network from endpoint/scm, but it’s basically broken for local users.
Just install it in a VM. I’ve done this before to force Windows 10 to install on a USB stick, you can pass a VM an entire physical drive to use instead of a virtual hard disk and install to that SSD directly from the VM (just kill the VM and reboot into the windows partition when the VM tries to reboot to the windows installation). I’m sure if you passed the VM a USB created with Rufus you could install from that as well.
I had this issue at work, I was able to fix it by using the windows media creation tool instead of just writing the iso to the drive. Not sure why that worked, but it has every time so far.
That’s unfortunate. Looks like thinkpads aren’t worth getting. I generally do not trust manfucturer preinstalled OS.
I would still get a ThinkPad, but then, I would never be putting Windows on it anyway.