Zorin OS 16 black screen with blinking cursor

I cannot get to terminal, probably because i am a Linux noob.

Alt shift f-keys does nothing
Tapping escape does nothing
Tapping left shift takes me to grub with flashing underscore but I cannot type

Intel i5-4690k

You mean at boot?

Yes as soon as I hit power on I tap left shift like my life depends on it and it takes me to a black screen that says grub then flashing underscore but no keyboard inputs work on that screen

Trying the installation usb in UEFI mode gives the same issue

Can you try hitting ctrl or alt or F1 at that screen to access tty?
IF that works, enter in:

sudo apt remove --purge nvidia*

Then reboot...

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Yes none of those work, grub screen remains

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This... I did not expect.
What happens if you try it with safe graphics?

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Works okay (some freezing) if I select the usb in non UEFI mode, standard graphics. With safe graphics seems to work fine as well

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Is secure boot in your EFI settings enabled or disabled?

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Disabled

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I also tried using the keyboard in all of my possible usb slots with all other USB devices removed and that didn't work for the grub screen

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I will admit... I am a bit confused by that. Usually the black screen and blinking cursor is blank- Are you willing to use your phone to take a picture of that grub screen?

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I can't upload the picture due to file size limit, but it is literally a black screen with"GRUB _" and that is it. The underscore is flashing

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What happens if you tap the e key?

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No response

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Well, I wonder if adding nomodeset to grub is all you need. You may need a different Nvidia driver. But you must access the build in order to do either.
If you use the LiveUSB, you can mount the partition to update grub:
https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-how-to-run-update-grub-from-a-livecd/

Following the above guide, before running sudo update-grub, you will need to run sudo nano /etc/defaul/grub
then add nomodeset behind "quiet splash" to make it "quiet splash nomodeset"
Then update-grub.

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I get failed to get canonical path of /cow on sudo update-grub

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That says it is trying to update-grub on the LiveUSB instead of on the mounted partition. Something went wrong.
Can you re-check your steps?

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I remounted everything and it says it worked, trying a restart

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