W541: Cannot boot from USB created with Windows 8 create recovery drive

Hello, I have just bought a W541, and want to install the supplied Windows 8 on an m.2 SSD.I created the recovery drive on a USB following the instructions in the User Manual, but the recover image procedure under Advanced Options cannot find the USB.During the re-image step, it fails to find a drive with a valid image.I've confirmed using the command window available under the Advanced Options that the USB is mounted Searching these forums, I found the following, which describes a similar problem for a T540:https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-W-Series-Laptops/Lenovo-W540-won-t-boot-from-USB-flash-drive-ThinkPad/m-p/1500902#M39097 This implies that the USB should first be formatted with FAT32 before use, which cannot work, since FAT32 only has a maximum 4 GB  partition, whereas when copied to the USB, the Windows 8 recovery drive occupies nearly 10 GB. Is it possible to specify the boot order from insde the BIOS? I could only find an entry under Security about UEFI boot enabling, nothing about the boot order. Can anyone help?Paul    

Hello Z, thanks for the reply. I tried another USB drive, and created a recovery drive, as before.This time it was able to detect the presence of the drive when I tapped on the Enter key when starting up, followed by the F12 key.  However, there are still problems when I clicked through the options:Choose the languageChoose your keyboard layoutTroubleshootAdvanced optionsSystem Image Recovery At this point I am offered the option Windows 8.1.When I select this, it indicates it is scanning for system disks, and then displays the the pop-up window "Re-image your computer": "Windows cannot find a system image on this computer" Why does this happen if it detected that there was a Windows 8.1 installation on the USB? I've spent a whole day now on this. Luckily, if I can't solve it, the machine is new and I can send it back to Lenovo, and ask to have it re-imaged with the downgrade option to Windows 7.

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