I tried everything. The Nano just doesn't get detected at all.
I bought it from ebay (as new, not used) a while ago, which I now feel was a mistake, but you can't turn time back right. Looking at the nano I can't find FTDI on it written anywhere instead it says CH340C which seems to confirm my concerns of a knock-off.
I installed the ch340 drivers (labeled as CH341S) on windows and still got nothing.
Windows Device manager shows nothing (tried all ports), arduino IDE logically shows nothing regardless which settings I choose.
Linux should have the drivers installed out of the box but it shows nothing related to the chip or the nano in dmesg, lsusb, lsmod.
I have a raspberry pi and an esp8266 board, couldn't I use one of them as a middle man to flash sketches or even the bootloader if that is the problem?
In the IDE select the OLD BOOTLOADER option.
If the drivers were properly installed you should have very few problems apart from selecting the correct bootloader.
Could you also take a few moments to Learn How To Use The Forum.
Other general help and troubleshooting advice can be found here.
It will help you get the best out of the forum in the future.
As noted in the opening post I tried everything. I selected nano, avr, genuino etc... with and without the old bootloader.
I am aware of the search function, but just like on stackoverflow, not every problem is the same.
I would not ask this question, if someone already had the EXACT SAME issue and had an answer to it...
Search function for the FORUM is at the upper right of the screen.
It is a common Q. with a few possible answers to be found rather than me repeating them all for you.
The "official" drivers for CH340 based boards are listed in the links I gave too.
There are some dodgy ones out there that may be re-branded or simply not compatible.