Slimline a0297 stuck in loop when attempting to install windows

[QuantumNachos]

Hey all

I'm attempting to install windows 11 on an old slimline we had kicking around my office from a former employee. Picked up a new SSD and attempted installing Windows from a USB stick, but it gets stuck in a loop where it attempts to pull the install file to open the bootloader and then resets.

I've attached a picture of the screen I get to when I attempt to boot up. Sits for 10 seconds, goes back to the HP splash logo and repeats ad nauseum.

Troubleshooting already attempted:

No other drives are attached to the device. Just the SSD and the USB boot drive

Confirmed all USB ports working in bios, tried multiple. Had same issues across both front and 2 back USBs, confirmed they're all working by plugging the keyboard into them as well. 

Tried formatting the drive as FAT32 and NTFS

  - FAT32 gives a 3FO Boot Device Not Found error

Tried both 32 bit and 64 bit windows installs

   - 32 bit gives me a 3FO Boot Device Not Found error

Tried a different USB stick, same issues

Tried both windows 10 and 11 ISO images, same issues

ISOs were downloaded direct from Microsoft and the stick was created using MCT22H2.

Confirmed overheating isn't an issue, cleaned the very small amount of dust from the heatsink 

Any insight that can be provided on what my next steps should be would be appreciated 

Screen before reboot:

 system info:

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Try the clean install with a Rufus-created USB flash drive with the W11 hardware check bypass option.

See this discussion at the link below for how to do set up the bootable USB flash drive made with Rufus.

You have to use the version of the Rufus utility that I zipped up and attached in the discussion (v3.18).

Re: Issues upgrading to windows 11 - HP Support Community - 8517912