Dell OS Recovery Tool usb drive not recognized in uefi on G7 15 7588

Hello all,

I have a Dell Inspiron G7 15 7588 laptop a year past warranty.  I'm no stranger to repairing of computers, but it's been a long time since I did this on a daily basis and many, many things have changed.

I have created a USB flash drive with the Dell OS Recovery Tool.  When I insert it in the laptop and press F12 it is not in the UEFI menu.  OK, so I go to Microsoft's site and download their Media Creation tool and basically do the same thing.  The drive is recognized in UEFI, but when I boot to it I get a black screen with the blue Windows logo in the center, a rotating circle of dots, and what looks like 4 or 5 arcs running across the bottom of the screen.  This screen never changes.  It's been at it for almost 3 hours now.

I did a diagnostic and the original SSD boot drive has a failure.  It is M.2 NVMe PCIe 128GB and what appears to be 2230 in size.  Dell doesn't have that on their site as a part that I can find so I got a Western Digital M.2 NVMe PCIe 500GB 2290 from Amazon.  It is recognized in the BIOS.  I haven't updated the BIOS in awhile and my latest is 1.15.

I haven't done the ISO/Rufus bit I've been reading about.  Was hoping this would be simple.  Technology is great...when it works.  

Would greatly appreciate ANY insight you kind folks might offer.

Thanks,

PBLisa