I was helping my friend install Mint on his laptop, it all went well and the installation finished, but the driver for the wi-fi module wouldn’t turn on properly, or something. I assumed this was due to secure boot messing with the drivers, so I tried to disable it in the BIOS (it’s an older laptop, no UEFI). But I have spent the last 3 hours trying and failing to open BIOS, and even GRUB. Nothing I try seems to work.

I tried all the function keys, as well as delete, escape, and enter, and the only thing I found is that F12 opens a boot options menu.

I tried holding and mashing shift throughout the boot procedure to get to GRUB.

I tried using the novo button (it’s a Lenovo laptop) which did open a new menu allowing me to select a “BIOS options” button, but it just rebooted after showing me a few rolling lines of text.

I tried plugging in the installation media I used before, which does take me to it’s GRUB, but choosing the UEFI options option there just causes a reboot.

I tried disconnecting the battery and the CMOS battery and waiting for 30 seconds in hopes of disabling fast boot, which didn’t work.

I edited GRUB config files to change the timeout to 10 and the type away from hidden, which didn’t do anything.

I disconnected the disk in hopes of it defaulting to the BIOS, which works for some laptops.

No option worked. I just cannot access BIOS or GRUB. I really don’t know where to go next, and could use some help.