

Just thinking aloud here…
Can you boot the install media when the laptop storage is installed?
If so, you can use gparted from the install media to clean the storage device and start from scratch. That might help.
You should be able to tell what mode to install the os in from the boot mode of the install media.
Yup. Exactly that. Us poors can work harder to earn enough so that we also can live in nirvana.