I can't remember the exact details and it was weeks ago now, but while I was experimenting and reinstalling Zorin Lite and LMDE 32bit I ended up being unable to boot either or see a grub menu of any sort, just an error that no bootable device was found - even though SG2D could boot both LMDE and Zorin just fine.
It may be witchcraft a coincidence, but this worked for me:
- reinstall Windows 10 using the whole drive
- reboot to test that it worked, which it did
- boot the LMDE 32bit installer from USB (Ventoy) and install using the whole drive (except explicitly keeping the EFI / ESP partition)
- reboot, use SG2D to get into LMDE and fix grub and then reorder boot sequence in BIOS (see linked post below for details)
- reboot, got the LMDE grub menu which worked properly
- reboot from Ventoy USB again, this time selecting the Zorin ISO
- be a coward and shrink the LMDE partition, only install Zorin in the free space rather than replace LMDE and use the whole drive
- reboot, got the Zorin grub menu which worked properly
I figured that the device and its hardware were designed to work with Windows, and Windows was (at least 10 years ago) fully compatible with that type of device, so it'd probably be able to fix the MBR / partitioning / bootloader / whatever the problem was, and I was thankfully proven right.
I have no idea what the actual problem was or how to fix it using linux, though 