Acer laptop stuck on No bootable device
Hello! Hope you can help me with this issue as I've tried reviving this laptop for a couple hours now.
**TL;DR:**
Tried to install linux on it, installation failed, can't boot from a USB drive anymore.
**Specs:**
Make and model: Acer Spin SP513-51-537M
Processor: Intel Core i5 7200U
RAM: 8GB
SSD: Toshiba THNSNK256GVN8
**What happened:**
This laptop had Windows 11 installed and I had recently updated it. It worked absolutely fine. It's a retired laptop that I barely use anymore - usually just for testing stuff out.
I decided I wanted to try out a linux distro called [VanillaOS](https://vanillaos.org/). Grabbed a 16GB USB drive and used it to boot into the installer. Everything seemed fine until I decided to install it proper. It was taking quite a while so I left it overnight, knowing that trying to cancel or turning off the computer could lead to me having to waste more time fixing the drive. I had no important information on the SSD as it was already backed up.
**What went wrong:**
The next day, it was still stuck. There was no option I could find to cancel the installation or anything of the sort. As it had been almost a full day since I started it, I was forced to do the *bad* thing of forcing it to turn off.
As I booted it back up, the dreaded "No bootable device" screen showed up, but I was fine with it at this point. I'll just flash another ISO onto the USB drive and try with another distro.
Welp, no. Tried with many distros and even windows again, on two different USB drives. Nothing shows up on the boot list when I press F12. I can access the BIOS and the drives are all listed correctly there.
**What I've tried to solve it:**
* Turning off Secure Boot; * Enabling D2D recovery and: * pressing ALT+F10 on bootup; * taking out the bios battery for 5 minutes and pressing the power button for 10-15 seconds and THEN try to press ALT+F10 on bootup; * Try all the other available USB ports with both USB drives; * Remove the SSD and try to boot from USB; * "Burning" the USB drive with different options available on Rufus (MBR, GPT p.ex); * Use the Windows Media Creation tool to create the bootable drive; * Use the Windows Media Creation tool to create an ISO and using Rufus to burn it; * Turning it off and back on again in frustration and disbelief; * Pressed other key combos like ALT+FN+F10 that I read somewhere in the Acer support forums.
**Other info that may be relevant:**
* Like I said before, the BIOS device list is correct while the Boot options menu (on F12) doesn't show any options; * About 4 years ago this computer came back from warranty with a password locked BIOS. I haven't been able to discover what the password is. I've been circumventing this with the bios unlock code (a PITA); * I remember that a few years ago when I did use linux on this computer, it would sometimes shut off on load. I assumed it was due to poor thermals back then - this computer is a screamer. What seemed strange to me is that it only happened once on Windows, at least that I can remember. I was unable to find tools to try to manually check the temps and control the fan, at least that worked.
I might be forgetting other things that I tried but well, this is driving me nuts - I'll add more if I can remember.
If you need any more details, please do feel free to ask.
Thanks in advance.