Cannot find bootable device - can't boot from USB - can't update BIOS

Question

Hi guys,I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on how to proceed with this faulty installation.I have Dell Inspiron 15 5570 that had a while ago Linux Mint installation on it. The installation wasn’t good, I didn’t use the laptop for a while and when I got back to it and wanted to set it up properly, I couldn’t do anything that I wanted. The problem is that the Bios won’t accept usb devices plugged in. In boot options it only shows 'ubuntu' and ' MocksbSet'. Adding a boot option doesn’t change a thing. Ubuntu option is set to look for boot in /EFI/ubuntu/ and I can't change that either. Disabling the Secure Boot and enabling Legacy Boot options doesn’t do anything. Basically, any changes I make to BIOS are not persisted. I tried flashing the BIOS but that didn’t work either. BIOS  remains on same version .I tried clearing CMOS but it didn’t help whatsoever. When I boot my laptop I manage to get to the Grub Rescue prompt. I tried listing my drives(including usb live installation which is visible from there) and setting up the proper one in prefix and root, but running insmod normal Or insmod linux Doesn’t do anything. Calling normal or linux commands afterward just returns: normal command not found.All the diagnostic tests on the laptop pass without any problems.What I tried doing after that is to take the ssd and hook it up externally to a computer and install Linux there. I installed ubuntu twice, with different partitioning and boot locations but when I put the hard drive back in the laptop and start the system, I can’t even get it to recognise hard drive as a bootable option. The only things I can do is to test the hardware, see boot options and that’s it. Is there any way I can get grub at least Has anyone come along a problem like this or if anyone has an idea what I could try next, it would be really appreciated!Thanks!

Philip_Yip · Answer

Power up your Dell and press [F2] to get to the BIOS setup. Try to resetting the UEFI BIOS to default settings. This should give you a UEFI Boot and Secure Boot and reset your Boot entries. Then retry a FAT32 formatted USB flash drive. If that still doesn't show try to add a Boot entry manually in the UEFI BIOS setup:

http://dellwindowsreinstallationguide.com/uefi/#DellBusinessManualBoot

luciferche · Answer

Thanks for the tips. I tried all of those, but there is no way to neither change any settings in BIOS nor to detect USB in Bootable options.

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