My PC only detects the USB flash drive where I burned the Windows 11 ISO at the second time, i.e., after trying to boot from the USB, nothing appears in the list's USB section, so I choose to boot from the HDD, then press CTRL ALT DEL to restart the PC and then the USB flash drive appears.
What device? Sounds like the typical cold boot problem, where USB devices do not report themselves to be ready in time for the BIOS to pick them up. CTRL+ALT+DEL is a warm boot, and the devices are already powered up and ready.
An USB flash drive. What's weird is that I burned the same content to another one and it wasn't detected too but after burning a different one, it was, so is it the content's fault? I burned a custom Windows 11 image created by NTLite but it's the first time I'm having this problem. Maybe it's Rufus' fault since I use it to burn the ISO but I've been using it for some time and I never had this problem before. Also, I got rid of an USB flash drive which froze my PC if connected when turning on the latter. What's weird is that it didn't freeze after signing in to my Windows local user account and I could access its content too. I connected this USB flash drive to another PC before turning the latter on and I didn't have this problem. Weird. Also, I burned a custom Windows 11 image created by NTLite too, so maybe it was the content's or Rufus' fault. EDIT: This time I copy pasted the Windows 11 image's content to the USB flash drive and I still have the first problem so is it NTLite's fault?
No, the problem is usually down to the USB hardware, device controllers and how they handle initialization. Mostly not real faults, but rather timing issues. Modern UEFI BIOS firmware boots very quickly, some devices are simply not fast enough to be detected upon cold boot, before having finished initialization.
It's the first time this happens to me and my PC is already 8 years old. Also, this doesn't happen with untouched Windows 11 images but only with ones created by NTLite.
Could be the boot sector or partition sector hanging, then. Especially with GPT formatted media, I had several ones over the years that apparently stopped the boot process infinitely at various stages, but it immediately continued once disconnecting it.
The USB flash media is formatted by Rufus as MBR, not GPT, and I wasn't having this problem recently.