Apologies to anyone waiting for follow up, I was delaying my next update until after I performed a clean install of Windows 11.
So: First off, disabling Quick Boot in the BIOS makes no difference. Again, the problem is not getting into the OS, it’s when the OS is attempting to perform a restart, so I wasn’t certain, but the logic of “The BIOS/UEFI isn’t initializing USB devices fully, and thus the expansion card with the OS may not be loading 100% correctly and not able to close right” was sound, so it was definitely worth a shot.
Second, I followed the manual install guide for expansion cards ( Guide: How to install Windows 10 onto storage expansion card - Framework Laptop - Framework Community) onto a second 250GB Expansion Card I have (used for experimenting with Linux distros, but figured I’d flip them so I can roll back to the other if needed). Once I was in the initial setup for Windows 11 and it performs a reboot after connecting to the network… it did it again. I went through further with the setup and installing drivers just to ensure it wasn’t something like a missing inf, windows update, or something along those lines, and after getting all the way set back up it’s still doing it.
So, it’s not the Rufus Windows to Go install method. I was talking about it with my coworker (we’re both System Administrators with varying past experience in “what the hell is wrong with this machine?” so having his input post-holiday break is helpful) and we agree that it sure feels like the following is happening:
When I ask for a restart in Windows 11, Windows performs it sequence of restart events. When it gets to the final step, requesting the system reset power, it just fails to do anything. The laptop goes into a “waiting for the OS to tell me what to do” state, but the OS is done/stopped, so it just sits there until I hard reset the power. This might be related to Windows Modern Standby in some way, which I’m only thinking because of how many other issues that introduces to Windows.
So at this point I’m just waiting on the Gen12 updated BIOS 3.06 to leave beta I think. Alternatively, I might roll back to Windows 10 as at least on my Gen11 motherboard I never had issues like this.