Ok folks, tech question.

My SO gifted me a fantastic little budget laptop made by Crealander. American Megatrends bios, Intel celeron N4020, comes with TPM 2.0 and Win 11.

Obviously perfect for a Mint swap! Except I can NOT force this bastard to boot from USB. It simply hangs after accessing the USB as evidenced from the activity lights on my drive.

I have done this many times but this stonewalling is a new problem to me.

Things I have tried:
different thumb drive

different .iso, different OS (tried Bazzite, Mint, and Mint light)

different bootable device maker (Balena Etcher, Rufus)

I've done every obvious BIOS method (deactivated the HD mbr, manually set boot override, tried with TPM on and off)

If anyone has any ideas I would love to try them. I've already run the debloater for win 11 but this nifty lil lappy still isn't snappy. Not slow, but certainly not as happy as Mint will make it.

Thanks!

Edit: I tried booting from an external dvd drive just now, no luck.