Today, I almost bricked my PC.

Installed Pop!_Os, an Ubuntu based #Linux distro from my #Ventoy flash drive. I noticed a long boot time after the PC was shut off. The following boot was running nearly ten minutes, so I restarted the PC. This occured several times. I then decided to check the BIOS and hit 'F12' during the startup screen.

Boy did that not give me the result I was looking for. Instead the screen went black and appeared to provide a console, where "^[[24~" would appear anytime I hit F12. This happened repeatedly, until I accidentally got back to the Pop!_Os login screen. I was able to then boot to the BIOS on the next restart.

Thinking I should do a fresh install of Pop!_Os, I Disabled all other boot options in the BIOS except the file I thought was for Ventoy.

I was wrong.

It was not the Ventoy boot file.

I then got a screen that told me, "Boot failure on device." With the only option being a button that said, "Shut down."

This was the only screen I could get.

I took my Ventoy flash drive and checked it on a second PC...unreadable. Great.

Some research on the internet recommended removing the battery on my motherboard. Doing so messed up the PC's clock, which gave me the option to modify the BIOS. Thank Yahweh.

Created a new Ventoy flash drive on the secondary PC. Used that with Linux Mint to reinstall and OS to my primary PC.

So, that's how I ended up with #LinuxMint. The whole ordeal lasted about four hours, and had me severely concerned I'd bricked my main boot drive and motherboard.

All good now, with Mint being quick to boot and successfully surviving multiple test reboots.