Troubleshooting booting issues for installing Kali Linux and Manjaro alongside Windows OS

I want to install a 'nix operating system alongside my Windows OS, but nothing seems to work. I have a 128GB SSD I use for Windows, and I'm trying to split my 1TB HDD between Kali Linux and Manjaro (I have been unable to successfully boot either one). On Manjaro 16.061, during a LiveUSB installation, the initial output gets stuck on A start job is running for livemedia mhwd script (1 min 30s/ nolimit) This is regardless of whether I try to boot with default or nonfree drivers and whether I try to boot in UEFI or BIOS mode (I tried all 4 combinations). The LiveUSB is confirmed to be working on another computer. I have successfully started an installation of Ubuntu using nomodeset during UEFI grub (which ultimately failed for some other reason), but the Manjaro boot screen (UEFI or BIOS menu) does not seem to have a grub menu for me to enter nomodeset if that is the problem. In other words, there doesn't seem to be a command line. I found a similar problem on Reddit with someone who has the same setup (NVIDIA GTX 970M + Skylake-gen i7-6700HQ), but their problem seems to have been resolved by using Manjaro 16.06. I am using that same distro with the same problem, so I am unsure what to do.