Boot Installation media from USB flash/Pen Drive?

Hi there,
The hardrive on my X60 died. Died so badly that even Resue and Recovery wouldn't start yet alone Windows (even in safe mode).
I have a new hard drive and installation media en route from Lenovo (laptop was under warranty)
The problem is that the installation media is on CD/DVD and my laptop does not have an optical drive.
So my questions are:
1. Can the installation media be installed from a USB Pen/Flash drive? (the BIOS does support USB booting)
2. Does anyone have experience of this or instructions?
On a side note I find it slightly irritating that even under warranty Lenovo won't supply me software/hardware that will return my laptop to its original state without the user, me, potentially having to buy an external optical drive. The warranty support chap said "you'll just need to buy an external USB optical drive" - *sighs*
Cheers
Lawrence

Tnx 4 ur reply RX-8.
I bought the lappie used. It had BIOS ver. 103 when I bought it, so I upgraded to ver. 111 and it kept on booting from pen drives just fine.
A few days after I bought it, the internal HDD failed with S.M.A.R.T. ID 5, something about reallocated sectors count. I got an exact replacement for the dead HDD. When I installed it, I unplugged the lappie's battery, then plugged the battery back in before I buttoned it all up. I think THAT was the start of my USB flash pen drive boot problem.
The new HDD is fine. It passes the HGST Drive Fitness Test with long SMART test, which takes between 2 and 3 hours.
I tried the EC update. Inside the zip file was a TXT file with a link to an MSI page that has a PDF file on how to do the EC update. I had that PDF open on another machine when I did the EC update so I could follow the instructions exactly.
After an F9 on the UEFI screen to restore defaults and an F10 to save the UEFI config, I rebooted and everything seemed OK. I then used a pin to force a reset. For the second time, I unplugged the lappie and waited a few minutes for the EC memory to clear.
I still have the same problem. I can't boot from a USB flash pen drive.
I'm enclosing shots of my USB config with XHCI enabled and disabled. I tried to boot from a pen drive with both XHCI settings. No joy. Will I ever be able to boot from a USB flash pen drive again?
I should also mention that I have a portable HDD with a USB 3 interface that boots just fine on other machines but won't boot on the GS60 Ghost. The LED on the portable HDD comes on and the lappie screen just sits there with a blinking underscore cursor.

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