
It's not like on a Mac where you have to press and hold certain key at startup depending on what one is trying to accomplish. You cannot hold down the F8 key only press it and immediately let it up at the correct time during the boot sequence which is at the point the BIOS hands over control to Windows. It appears to me that VM doesn't accept any keyboard input during boot sequence. When the issue next occurs again, remove the last login item you added, and that should resolve the problem.I have tried holding F8 / Fn+F8 during Virtual Machine boot several times but without success. Once you've done that, remove them all using the minus (–) button, then add them back and restart your Mac after adding each one. In such cases, make a note of the login items listed under your user account in System Preferences -> Users & Groups. If the issue you're having doesn't occur in safe mode, that indicates a potential problem with a startup item. If the issue you're experiencing still occurs in safe mode, or your Mac restarts several times and then shuts down, reinstall macOS and double-check that the system software and any third-party apps are up to date. Once your Mac has booted into safe mode (you'll see "Safe Boot" in red in the upper right), log in using your account credentials.Press and hold the Shift key, then click Continue in Safe Mode.Turn on your Mac and continue to press and hold the power button until you see the startup options window.If your Mac is powered on, shut it down ( menu -> Shut Down).

How to Boot into Safe Mode on Apple Silicon Macs

It also deletes certain caches, including the kernel cache, which are recreated on the fly when needed.

It does this by preventing your Mac from loading things like login items, non-system fonts, and system extensions, and performing a First Aid check on your startup disk. Starting up your Mac in safe mode can help you determine whether an issue you're experiencing is caused by the software that loads every time your Mac starts up. This article explains how to use the new boot and recovery interface to start up your computer in safe mode. Macs introduce a new system for accessing recovery and security options at startup.
