Problems installing Ubuntu on Acer laptop

Although I believe the right combination of UEFI settings will allow the install (but my experience with that UEFI was with a much earlier version and sounds like it may be a bit different)....

This is a workaround to get your install done. Power down the machine and one of the machines that you said you don't have a problem installing on.

Remove the drives from those machines. Place your target drive in the non-problematic machine and complete your install (without secure boot or any type of security). Put it back in your troublesome laptop and boot it up.

Caveat.... Now, I will say... my experience(with that UEFI) when I WAS able to install in legacy mode, the install finished, but the boot problems were plentiful... So I worked until I figured out the nuances of the UEFI(like i mentioned in the comments)... So their may be a chance that even when you get your drive installed and working on the other machine, you may very well have the same issue of being able to boot.

I wish I could offer more, but without seeing all the options on your UEFI and how they react with each other, it's hard to say which way to go. There seem to be a lot of googling of "insydeh20 no legacy boot" with mixed results... I'd still try some of those solutions first. They may lead you to the proper answer.... But, anytime I have been defeated by UEFI/BIOS/LEGACY/SECURE/ETC problems, I have had success doing the solution that I suggested above.

Acer machines appear to all have boot code which automatically looks for a Windows boot directory. I've found you can fool them into thinking they're running Windows, whereas they're actually running Ubuntu simply by a directory copy & one file rename.

This is how I did it,

1. Make Ubuntu installation USB

2. Boot from installation USB & install Ubuntu (given choices I prefer to scrub the whole of the hard drive and do minimal install). At this point you'll probably find you get boot fails if you try to re-boot from hard drive

3. Boot once again from your Ubuntu installation USB and run a Live (Try) Ubuntu session

4. Open a terminal, then go through these steps to copy the Ubuntu boot directory into Microsoft boot directory space

   sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt
   cd /mnt
   ls
   cd EFI
   ls
   sudo mkdir Microsoft
   cd Microsoft
   sudo mkdir Boot
   cd Boot
   sudo cp -r /mnt/EFI/ubuntu/* .
   sudo mv shimx64.efi bootmgfw.efi
   

and hey presto! it boots, and the 'Windows Boot Manager' magically puts 'Windows Boot' (which is now actually Ubuntu 20.04) to the top of the list in the F2 boot menu.

Note: I've got an Acer ES1-132 but suspect most Acer machines are the same

Warning: You may need to run through steps 3) & 4) again if the boot directory changes in the future, but this can be done without loss of data or any need to re-install Ubuntu. This happened to me once in last 4 years.

I bought A315-23 laptop a few days back, and stumbled upon the same problem. Long story short, solution is to set nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500 kernel option at boot. Then installation works out-of-box. After installing the same option needs to be added to grub (edit /etc/default/grub followed with update-grub).

Longer story, how I found solution: As described, we both can initiate a boot but a hang happens along the way. I had little hope the problem being connected to UEFI, still tried to play a little with fast-boot and secure-boot options without success. Given Egor reported system boots correctly after disabling SSD (which was an excellent hint), I tried to follow this path. The laptop has WD 2018/PC SN520 NVMe SSD. I found a suggestion how to fix the problem at https://community.wd.com/t/linux-support-for-wd-black-nvme-2018/225446/7.

1. In the GRUB boot menu, press e to edit startup parameter. Add nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500 after the end of "quiet splash"
   Ctrl-x to boot up, the installer should detect this disk in partition step.
2. After finishing finish installation, press shift while power on to enter GRUB again, add the same kernel parameter nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500, Ctrl-x to boot up.
3. You will see Ubuntu boot up successfully, edit /etc/default/grub, add parameter nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500 again, execute sudo update-grub so that every time boot up will contain this parameter in the grub automatically, no more manual editing is necessary.