Windows update bricked my laptop - having hard time installing Linux due to Windows hibernate partition

I have an Asus Zenbook that’s out of warranty. A Windows update bricked it a few months ago. I accidentally closed the lid while it was updating (I was in a rush), and that’s a death sentence on Windows machines.

It was stuck in a boot loop after that. Trying to repair from a bootable USB was not possible (it would just hang indefinitely on the Asus splash screen with the spinning dots). I have read that Asus blocks you from running Windows media on purpose to force people to send their laptops in for servicing (but they can bite me, if that’s the case).

Anyway, I can get Linux to boot from a USB with no issues, but I can’t install Linux because of the residual Windows hibernate partition that was created when it last crashed.

I tried to install Pop_OS and Manjaro, and neither was successful.

Here is the error when booting Pop_OS:

Here is the error when installing the OS:

Here is the error when trying to run “ntfsfix”: See post below (I can’t post more than 2 images)

Fast boot, secure boot, and all that other junk is turned off in BIOS.

Most troubleshooting tips I’ve found haven’t been helpful as they require me to boot Windows, which I can’t do.

Am I SOL, or is there still something I can do from this state?

Here are my drive partitions: See post below

Can I safely delete or repartition anything here?

This is the last Windows laptop I ever buy (it’s an absolute nightmare OS for portable computing).

Here are the images of the ntfsfix error:

And my current partitions:

If you want to remove Win-OS anyway, just delete all partitions and not be bothered about it anymore. Even the EFI partition can be deleted if your BIOS still supports MBR boot. In the event EFI is the only boot option, shrink the partition (better: delete and reconfigure) to about 100MB, given that it only uses 30MB ATM.

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Yeah, I’d just load up a USB drive with Ubuntu, or some other distro that includes gparted, nuke from orbit, and start over.

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Why would you fall back to crappy old MBR boot even if it worked?

Erase all the partitions, then create a fresh GPT and add an EFI System partition of about 200 MB with a FAT format. Then all the rest of the Linux partitions you might want. You might still want a EXT4 /boot. And if it isn’t automatic in your distro filesystem setup you assign the EFI System to /boot/efi

Do you need any data? Mount the partitions and copy it off.

If not, delete them all and make new ones.

Windows 10 goes to sleep (even though it’s disabled) in the middle of compiling or file transfers. I get it, it’s boring.

And let me mention how fucked search is. It used to weigh results by access frequency, now it’s just random. Sometimes it even forgets the files. I fucking made shortcuts on the desktop for them.

Also search completely stopped working on drives, like I see the files, but if I search for them in the Explorer window, it doesn’t find them. What the fuck. This installation was untouched for months, except for Windows updates.

I don’t have the right words to describe this clusterfuck of an OS.