Yeah but none of that should literally break your hardware. That sounds odd to me.
That is very strange indeed. But @limotux reminds me of Kung Fu panda 
things break when he touches it
Edit: not fun when something breaks, but I take things with humor whenever I can…
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There maybe several key combos, or you could try another usb stick if you have an additional computer and format again… Or there might be a grub repair mode still working. Don’t know if systemd d has that too.
Neither me! Maybe it is just coincidence.
The laptop is quite old (almost 10 yrs)
Normally software doesn’t break hardware.
And this is the way I like it. No matter what happens.
And yes, it happens with me all the time, since I was a kid, I am always, discovering and “fixing” things even if they are not broken. So, sometimes I break things to fix them.
Grub is much older than that.
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I never thought this can happen! Unable to boot USB or enter BIOS?
I guess it is just coincidence that the laptop just passed away. It had to die someday anyway. It is old enough.
Yes… Grub is much older but the difference is that my laptop was just getting older, and Grub is still “growing” not really getting older.
Does the laptop have a removable battery? With laptop unplugged take out the battery and hold down the power button for a minute to drain power from the system. Put the battery back in and plug in the laptop. Power it on and go directly into bios settings.
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Just did it. Pressed and released power button several times while battery out and unplugged.
Still the same.
It seems the machine itself is dead!
I do not know of anything that can disable BIOS!
Though the strange thing I can’t understand how come I get to this Grub menu, press c to get a prompt like grub:> where I could issue some commands like ls which returns results for me.
If it is dead it should be dead! I now have a zombie laptop. This is my first real life encounter with zombies.
Did you hold down the power button long enough. Battery out and unplugged?
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Well, I didn’t see @dalto arming of changing boot loaders on BTRFS.
But he gave us a nice tutorial about how to convert from Grub to systems-boot which I did 2 times on BTRFS and encountered no problems (yes I made a fresh install 2 times at least)
I do not know maybe with the latest “upgrades” to Grub things changed, maybe it is easier to convert from Grub to systemd-boot as it is part of systemd but not the other way round (as you say @dalto warned)
something in this thread… to me it seems you are way over your head. That maybe ok, you can learn, you can break things. I for example don’t even use btrfs, but use grub, and live happily in my working linux distro…
just seems to me that changing your system to systemd created way more questions and problems than staying on grub. 
Edit: this concerns snapshots, but who knows what other complications come with btrfs…
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Yes… I just did it again with battery out and unplugged. Several presses and one long press for 45 seconds.
I remember I noticed over the past few days while plugged in, the battery indicator used to blink (as if repeatedly plugged and unplugged). So I always double checked the cable and connection and physically repluging)
So, perhaps a short circuit inside the laptop.
It became a zombie anyway!
But still I do not understand how do I actually get to the Grub prompt if BIOS a is dead or whatever!
Zombie!
To be clear, my warning was related to losing the ability to boot off of snapshots…
I don’t think that grub, refind or systemd-boot can cause that type of failure.
btrfs isn’t some mysterious secret. The features and limitations are pretty well known.
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Well, my 2 months life with BTRFS.
Everything was perfect till this Grub issue.
After that and after converting to systemd-boot everything was perfect as well (other than being unable to boot to earlier snapshots)
The problems happened when I tried go back Grub and it might be a hardware problem that just happened coincidently.
Well, I will see if I get a working laptop I may stick to Grub (but I would like to do something to do things automagically if there is a Grub update) a hook perhaps. But I have to study and learn how to do it properly first.
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What brand/model?
Normally…
There are some stories of bricked devices after deleting /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=207549
Maybe after your trials, your efi boot entries are so messed up that your firmware can’t deal with it anymore 
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Not any software/update/upgrade/install…. can cause this.
I am not blaming Grub for this accordingly for sure.
I think it is some sort of hardware failure (short circuit perhaps - previous post)
It is time for me to get a new laptop anyway. Who stays with a laptop for more than 10 years? (Though I enjoyed the concept of running the latest software on a really old machine)
(The only thing I do not like is almost all have windoze preinstalled, though I will sure single boot EOS, but I don’t like the idea but I don’t really care of course)
Lenovo G580
I do not think I deleted anything other than steps I mentioned.
I will read the link.
Thank you.