Boot to blinking cursor after install latest release cinnamon

Hi,

I've installed mint successfully from an iso created on a USB drive to a new 240 gb ssd with three partition that I created during the installation.

1. 100 gb / for the OS.
2. 136 gb /home
3. 6 gb swap.

I've fixed the bios to load the ssd first on boot, but it goes straight to a blinking cursor.

Is this a bootloader issue or hardware?

This is on 10 year old laptop with i5 core, radeon graphics card 6gb ram.

Mint works ok, albeit slow on the live boot from usb.

Thanks for your help.