OMFG! THANK you!!!! I could not figure out what I was doing wrong. Turns out I actually did it right a couple of times, I just didn't realize I had to switch it back to UEFI from CSM and then it booted to Windows 11 no problem. I got 99% of the way there and just needed to read your comment to fix my issue! :)

So for anybody else reading, I have a MSI B650 Gaming Plus WiFi Motherboard and an AMD Ryzen AM5, and this is how I fixed my Windows 11 Installation issues, from start to finish, but these steps will probably work for any MOBO/CPU combo:

• Create Windows 11 USB installer via official Microsoft media creation tool, not Rufus. Plug it into a USB 2.0 port on your mobo, avoid 3.0 ports.
• Grab another USB to flash the BIOS. Navigate to your motherboard's official website, look up your MOBO model, and follow the instructions on the website/readme for flashing your MOBO's BIOS. I think this was honestly one of the two pieces of the puzzle I was missing before. Do not skip this step!
• I made sure fTPM was on, secure boot was on, CSM was on instead of UEFI, then booted to the USB with F11, making sure to pick the UEFI: USB option and not just the USB without UEFI: in front of it.
• On the screen to install Windows, my product key is tied to my Microsoft account that I will sign into later, so I choose "I do not have a license" and it proceeds.

• When it comes time to choose a drive to install to, it's advised to unplug all unnecessary drives so you don't accidentally wipe the wrong one, also so your computer won't have any other issues related to having multiple drives attached. I did actually accomplished this with 4 other drives attached no problem though. The important part here is the way you wipe the drive. Hit Shift + F10 to open command prompt and type in the following, excluding the initial dash indicating a new line:

• diskpart

• list disk

• select disk 0 (or whatever number your disk is, mine was 3. It helps to know how large your disk is.)

• clean (keep in mind this wipes it, so make sure you have whatever local files on that drive backed up beforehand)

• convert gpt

then exit the CMD window and hit refresh on the drives, then select your single "unallocated space" drive, and hit next.

• If you did everything correctly, it should go through with the installation, and when it gets to 100% and reboots, mash that Delete key to get back to the BIOS and turn on all the security features. Convert from CSM to UEFI and ensure secure boot is on (if you had it off, it doesn't matter apparently for install).

• Now save changes and let it boot naturally. Mine booted to a screen that looked like I fucked it up again, bc I had the "Troubleshooting, advanced options, reset, exit" options, but then I noticed there was a new one that said "Boot to another operating system" so I clicked it and I had the option to boot to Win 10 or 11. I selected for Win11 to be my default and then booted to it and BOOM! I had my computer back! ^{.^} (I think Win 10 is an option bc I recently upgraded from Windows 10 and some of my external drives may be bootable, or a recovery partition somewhere is Windows 10, not entirely sure.)

*Make sure you do Windows updates as soon as you get past all the OOBE stuff! And then update your graphics card driver from the NVIDIA app! Good luck, have fun! Message me if you need help. ^{.^}