Consistently hanging on reboot

[atxx]

I've been using OPNsense for a couple of years now without issue, running on my HP Microserver Gen8. After a certain version (//edit: I believe this started occurring after some 22.x.x update), I have the issue that OPNsense will consistently not boot. I'm attaching screenshots of where boot fails.

Just to be clear, a fresh install boots fine, I then import my config and reboot and that is fine too, and I'm up and running with my config working fine. At any subsequent point if I reboot, or update and reboot, I'm stuck at the point shown in the below screenshots. I have tried all 4 installation methods both on a sata ssd as well as a usb flash drive or sd card and unfortunately I get the same results.

So now I'm up and running on 23.1 but cannot update or reboot since I won't be able to and I'll have to reinstall from scratch. This has been quite time consuming; I'm very grateful to anyone who can give me any pointers as to why this is happening and how I can solve it!

Apologies if my description is a bit vague, every time this happens I'm rushing to restore connectivity.

[atxx]

All right, I've found myself with another HP Microserver gen8 and some spare time in order to better understand when the failure to boot occurs. It seems that after a clean install I can update, and reboot as many times I want, no issues at all. The boot issue occurs after I restore my configuration, reboot (in order to apply it), and then reboot again. This is how it looks this time around, on 23.1.4. Just to be clear, when I restore my configuration and reboot everything works fine, and the configuration has been restored and works with no issues, until the next reboot, where the system becomes unbootable.

[axsdenied]

While a pain the ass, are you able to rebuild your configuration from scratch?  P.S. I assume "secure boot" is off in the bios?

[atxx]

While a pain the ass, are you able to rebuild your configuration from scratch?  P.S. I assume "secure boot" is off in the bios?

I'll check both and get back. I have a feeling that I did try to rebuild config from scratch last time I upgraded, but it's worth doing again since I have the hardware available now.