That's a windows splash screen, not a splash screen when booting a Linuxcnc install disk.

Download this program and install, after reading the whole page.
win32diskimager.org/

When you insert the USB stick you want to make a Linuxcnc bootdisk don't let windows do anything if it cant read your USB stick, windows does not be able to read the USB stick.

Run the Program you just installed.
Select the image, the image you have confirmed the md5sum is good, if not download it again and check again. I'm not a windows user so you'll have to search how to check the md5sum under windows. Also select your USB drive, do not select a hard disk.

Write the image to the USB stick.

If windows complains about not being able to read the disk DO NOTHING. Everything is ok.

Reboot the computer and select USB boot. If you are going to install make sure you have enough space on your disk or have an unused disk available for Linuxcnc.

I recommend this tool as all it does is copy form the image file to the usb stick byte for byte. It doesn't try to be fancy, it does exactly what is required to create a bootable USB Stick from the image.

I got past that. It attempts to boot from USB drive but this is as far as it goes.  See attachment. 
 

Okay. I am using Rufus but it does not like the ISO. The complaint is "the ISO you have selected contains a UEFI bootloader that has bween revoked. and that will produce a "Security Violation" screen. Rufus suggests a more up to date ISO. linuxCNC 2.9.4 is not current enough?

Can you post your config files?

Long story short, a lot of things were changed before I replaced the the 7i97t. Since then, I have have been cutting with zero issues. The thcad for arc volts is reading accurately while cutting. The thcad for ohmic is not hooked up. I can't get it to work, but maybe that's a good thing because it sounds like it's a bad idea with hf start.

The longer story is that this machine didn't have a home. So while its new home was being built, I set it up temporarily in my shop, so I could attempt to retrofit it with linuxcnc. When I fired up the torch for the first time, it damaged the 7i97t. This was with both ohmic and arc volts hooked up, so its anybodys guess what caused it. I added some grounds and an emi filter and few other things then replaced the 7i97t. Then I got it working great with a non hf plasma(except I didn't hook up ohmic).
Then after it was moved into its new home, we added several ground rods and hooked it up to the hf start plasma the way you had just advised. It's been cutting great. 

I know I ask a lot stupid questions but I do appreciate the help.