ESXI 7 installer error 28 vmx.v00 and resolution

ESXI 7 installer error on Ryzen 3100 machine

System:

Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite Pro

Ryzen 3100

Sandisk 32GB USB sticks

 Seeing the following error during the boot of the install USB stick, imaged by Rufus from ISO.

CRC error during decompression, Received CRC (<snip>) != calculated CRC (<snip>)

gzip_extract failed for /vmx.v00 (size 0): CRC error

Error 28 (CRC) error while loading module: /vmx.v00

Compressed MD5: <snip>

Decompressed MD5: 0000000000000<snip>

Fatal error: 28 (CRC Error)

Tried:

• Different USB ports
• Different ESXI versions (6.7 produced similar errors) 
• Different USB sticks
• Different partition types (MBR vs GPT)
• Booting from an existing ESXI 6.7 install

Resolution found after these two steps: 

• Disabled CSM (Compatibility Support Mode) in the UEFI settings
• Ensured the machine booted from the UEFI bootloader on the USB stick. For some reason the BIOS wanted to boot from "VMWare USB FDMAP" or something, but there were two additional boot entries that were prefixed with "UEFI: " and that worked like a charm.

 

Searching for the CRC 28 error found zero helpful hits, so hopefully this will help provide relevant resolutions for someone.