Windows 11 does not restart

Hello, thank you everyone for your help. I have a Win11 desktop HP, Model S01-aF0134z. It does not restart, but it can shutdown. The white circle freezes during restart almost every time. Shutdown never freezes. I reinstalled Win11 2H22 from scratch. Performed all updates, used HP Support Assistant, AMD Driver app. BIOS is newest version. DISM good. chkdisk good. SFC /scannow was a bit long and I did not understand all of it.

When I install Win11 fresh, I can restart 50x, even after all updates. I used an old VGA monitor. Then, 2 days later, I plugged it into a new monitor with HDMI, and it had to do several more driver updates, and a .NET update. Suddenly the AMD Driver app stopped working, saying I had installed an incompatible driver. I deleted the Display driver in Device Manager, deleted all of the driver updates that Windows had just done, shutdown, turned back on, but still could not restart. Safe Mode with networking can restart everytime with no issue.

For troubleshooting, I disconnected all SATA cables, only using NVMe now with Win11 on it. swapped USB dongles to different brands. Disabled all unnecessary startup items. This issue only happened today, after Win11 installed several updates, some of the updates were not drivers, and I attempted to uninstall the non-driver updates, but it said they could not be uninstalled, which is a little odd because I remember in Win10 it appeared that you could uninstall quality, feature updates, and others. I uninstalled the AMD Media update, which was in the sound. Windows installed a "Surface - System" update. They don't mean the Microsoft Surface Computer do they? This is not a MS Surface, this is an HP. What does that mean? I could not find a way to uninstall that update.

What else can I try?

Sounds like a corrupt VGA driver - especially since it works just fine in Safe Mode (which doesn't require/run on a proprietary driver).

1. Download the latest supported driver for your Video Card - from AMD.

2. Google for DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) and download it - then extract it.

3. Restart in Safe Mode and run DDU. Select AMD for uninstallation (this tool will do a clean removal of all your AMD drivers) - and set it to restart afterwards (Clean and Restart). Before starting the Uninstall process - press Win Key + R, type msconfig + select the BOOT tab and uncheck Safe-boot - but click on "Exit without restart (cause you still need to run DDU and clean/remove the faulty drivers)". Next you click UNINSTALL on DDU while selecting to auto-restart when done.

4. When all is done it will reboot and restart into Windows. So next you will install the AMD driver.

Above steps usually solve that type of issue (a corrupted driver).

HP machines usually have 'HP Support Assistant' installed. This communicates directly with HP and ensures that only the correct drivers are installed.

Try running it. If it isn't installed then it can be installed from HP Support Assistant | HP® Support or via Microsoft Store.

wiganken said:

HP machines usually have 'HP Support Assistant' installed. This communicates directly with HP and ensures that only the correct drivers are installed.

Try running it. If it isn't installed then it can be installed from HP Support Assistant | HP® Support or via Microsoft Store.

Click to expand...

If it's a new system - sure, that could do the job (even if the drivers in question - are outdated compared to the latest from the GPU manufacturer). Tho, on older systems - where the last/latest OEM drivers displayed in HP SA - were both heavily updated and unstable (most commonly - video_TDR_failure BSOD errors - or even lacking a basic functionality while running a game and such) - the latest driver from the the GPU manufacturer - proved to be a far better option to the OEM drivers.

I believe I have found the problem. It restarts as long as I don't activate Windows Security > Memory Integrity. Solved problem permanently by going to UEFI > Disable Hardware Virtualization. Although I could have left UEFI Hardware Virtualization on, it would have made a yellow exclamation point in my Windows Security, and I didn't want that. I will not be using Hyper-v, VirtualBox, VMWare on this PC, so I won't need Hardware Virtualization, correct? Thanks.

In my original post, I said I already used HP Support Assistant.

wiganken said:

HP machines usually have 'HP Support Assistant' installed. This communicates directly with HP and ensures that only the correct drivers are installed.

Try running it. If it isn't installed then it can be installed from HP Support Assistant | HP® Support or via Microsoft Store

Click to expand...