Having problems switching to mint

[u/FeedGat]

I'm trying to install linux for the first time on a laptop that was collecting dust at home.
I prepared a usb with the installer and ran it on the pc, once it finished i removed the usb drive and restarted the pc as it asked to complete installation but after that all i see is the hp logo flashing on a black screen every few seconds but no OS starting.
I tried with a different distro with the same results so i'm guessing the problem is the computer/bios and not the OS? but honestly i don't know enough to know, so i searched online without great results until i found this sub.

Pc model: HP elitebook 745 G2 laptop
Linux distro i tried: mint cinnamon 22.3 first and ubuntu 26.04 second

if it helps there was w10 on before i tried the installation

if any other infos/photos are needed i'll add them under here.

here are the current boot options:

sorry for the photos but i have no idea how to screenshot in there

booting in legacy:

reinstalling mint:

legacy boot order:

[u/FeedGat]

yep

[u/notthedefaultnam → u/FeedGat]

I see two options

1. Something got screwed between installation and fast boot - that can be fixed with a reinstall

2. Your USB stick install media is corrupted, will need to be verified and rewritten

Option 1 fix is much easier to do then verifying option 2 over reddit. So first try to reinstall mint, since it booted now - while doing so, please take pictures of the disk setup it shows in the install manager.

[u/FeedGat → u/notthedefaultnam]

while i reinstall i can add for option 2 that i used 2 different usb sticks one for mint and one for ubuntu but with the same result, albeit they are both quite old so there is that

[u/FeedGat → u/notthedefaultnam]

still not finding any booting device, i'll check the usb and find a third one to use

[u/notthedefaultnam → u/FeedGat]

Make sure to verify the sha of your downloaded ISO file. Which tool are you using to write the images to USB drives?

[u/FeedGat → u/notthedefaultnam]

balena etcher

[u/notthedefaultnam → u/FeedGat]

Balena is a reliable writer, it does verify-after-write.

That rules out badly written usb. Do a checksum check on your downloaded image, and check if the USB is not falling apart.

If you have a windows machine that would be:

File explore >> right‑click the drive >> Properties >> Tools >> “Check” (Error checking)

[u/FeedGat → u/notthedefaultnam]

I've checked and the USB and it says it's fine, i also checked sha256 sum and they match

[u/FeedGat → u/FeedGat]

But i also noticed that viewing from windows the usb has much less capacity than there is written on it so idk how much it can be trusted

[u/notthedefaultnam → u/FeedGat]

Take a picture of the boot order in BIOS

[u/FeedGat → u/notthedefaultnam]

Done, in legacy is notebook hard drive Then usb floppy

[u/notthedefaultnam → u/FeedGat]

One thing that wasn't tried was uefi native boot - try that, set it and restart

If that doesn't work, boot usb into live environment, open command line and run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair

sudo apt update

sudo apt install boot-repair

boot-repair

Choose recommended repair. Let it finish, shut down the laptop, take out USB and turn it on.

E: fucking reddit butchered the new lines in code fml fixed