Just popped Arch on a Thinkpad Carbon X1 gen8. There about 300 on eBay. Great decision

I use Arch btw

Mmmm 14 years worth of legal fees

After reading the new behavior I’m fairly confident it’s hardware failure from the laptop, most likely the drive. I’ve experienced odd install failure behavior like this before which was a sad going bad.

OP has said a few times that they have installed windows from the USB previously without issues. Please remember that all hardware will eventually go bad. Just because it worked in the past, that doesn’t guarantee it would work today.

To add to this, if you’ve only been trying to write the ISO to a USB drive this whole time have you tried different USB drives as well?

No, I wouldn’t expect any issues with Mint.

1. what’s your hardware
2. you say burn, but then mention USB, what are you using to create the install media? If I’m making a bootable usb in windows I exclusively use Rufus and haven’t had issues to date

Not an nvidia user, but afaik it has been getting better but it’s still not great so with the latest AMD announcement are you able to wait for the next GEN of AMD cards?

Unfortunately I can’t help, I’ve yet to mess withVR at all let alone in Linux. Good luck.

Send me a laptop and I’ll spend a few hours a week helping on your forums or even tickets. But no one should work for free

I wouldn’t use it outdoor. It makes a beautiful desk or other indoor furniture

Anytime a fortune500 is against something by saying it’s essentially bad for business, then I’m all for it