Unable To Reinstall OS From USB

[jdstew218]

We have some older laptops at work and we are taking out the large 1TB NVMe drives and putting in 256GB NVMe drives. We then do a fresh install of Windows 11, clean up the laptop and give it away to an employee. People like getting them for their kids or older adults for basic web browsing.

The issue we are seeing today is we put in the replacement drive, insert the Windows install USB, get into the boot menu, select the USB, the menu goes away as if it is going to start installing but then the original menu comes back. Select boot from USB again, and round and round we go. We try multiple 256GB drives same result. Multiple Windows install USBs, same result. Put the original 1TB drive in and we can install from USB without any issue.

We've gone into the BIOS and turned off the options in HP Sure Start thinking that might have something to do with it but it did not. We disconnected the power and removed the battery for some time, put it all back together and still cannot boot to the Windows install USB if we replace the NVMe drive but Windows install works fine if we use the original NVME that was installed in the latop.

So far this has happend to 3X EliteBook 840 G6 and an EliteBook 840 G7.

But we've had other G6/G7 laptops that had no issue swapping out the drive and installing Windows from the USB.

Any idea why this is happening?

[jdstew218]

We just now had one that seemed to work. In the boot menu I selected the USB. It saw it, allowed me to choose which drive to insatll the OS to, and then began installing. It installed for a while (I didn't see what % it got to) and then restarted but when it booted, it was a white screen with the HP Sure Start banner on the top and it said no OS was found and to enter the 4 digits indicated to enter HP Sure Recover where it tries doing a PXE boot.

We are now up to 6 laptops on which we can't install a fresh OS.