Question Laptop won't boot past the BIOS ?

[Alain Reve]

I have a Lenovo Ideapad S130-14IGM Laptop which has valuable data on it. I can access the BIOS.
When I turn it on, I see first the Lenovo splash screen, then the rotating Lubuntu logo, then the mouse pointer.
It stops there.

I can access the BIOS by repeatedly hitting the F2 key after power up.

• I tried switching from Legacy to UEFI settings (and back). Same.
• I tried switching from iGPU to GPU but no such setting in the BIOS.
• I tried booting from USB. Same.

Safe boot is disabled. The usb key can boot another machine, so the problem doesn't come from that.

Previously, it was easily freezing.
- If I left Gmail opened without using it, the laptop would freeze.
- If I opened Gmail and Libre Office at the same time, it would freeze.
- If I used Facebook for more than a few minutes, it would freeze.
I just avoided freezing it as much as possible, and if it happened I rebooted.
I kept using it for work because it's easy to carry, smaller and lighter than my other machine.

I have 2 questions:

1. Can I fix it and how?
2. Can I plug it into the other machine (bridged usb cable?) to retrieve the data?

 

[Lutfij]

- Can I fix it and how?
If reinstalling the OS onto a spare drive(after you've removed the original drive that the laptop came with) alleviates the issue, then either the drive is faulty/failing or the OS on the drive is corrupt.

- Can I plug it into the other machine (bridged usb cable?) to retrieve the data?
Have you tried repairing the OS?

 

[Alain Reve]

I can't do anything on the OS, because I can't get into terminal mode. Or maybe I could but I haven't found out how to do it yet without going through the GUI.

I have a bootable usb key, from which I could access some of the laptop OS settings, but the laptop won't boot from that either.