21H1 Unattended Installation Requires Enter Key Press

[AMQB]

I'm not very experienced with unattended installations so I manage by doing self research. My unattended installation of 20H2 was working fine. I downloaded Windows 10 Professional 21H1 from VLSC and used the same files from the previous installation. The only thing that has changed is that the latest MS Office 2019 Pro Plus will also be installed during OS installation.

During the last reboot, I simply get the Dell logo (as I'm testing out on a Dell PC) along with the circles spinning endlessly. If I force a reboot or press the enter key, the installation is finished and the desktop loads.

How can I find out what is causing this?

I removed Office from the equation, the same thing happens. The reason I did this is because the new setup strangely prompts to click on "Finish" after Office is installed even though it is specified to be a silent installation in the configuration file.

Any leads?

 

[AMQB]

Apparently, it is (perhaps) the unattend.xml file that is causing this because removing it didn't cause a bootloop, although sysprep didn't complete which was expected. I've attached my fairly simple unattend.xml if anyone can help me understand this problem so that it can be resolved.