Keep taking me to the bootloader

Yesterday I installed CachyOS on my HP EliteBook 840 G5. The installation works, and I can boot into the desktop normally if I manually select the drive from the bootloader UI. However, every time I completely shut down and turn the laptop back on, it defaults straight to the bootloader menu instead of automatically launching the OS.

Additionally, my desktop settings aren’t sticking: every time I log in, the theme resets to default and the CachyOS welcome screen pops up as if it’s the first boot, though the screen resolution stays correct.

In my BIOS boot options, both Legacy Boot and UEFI/System Boot are currently enabled. How do I make the laptop automatically boot into the OS and get my theme settings to save?

I can see you have posted a few times before on the forum already, but welcome to the forum!

Which filesystem, bootloader and desktop environment did you choose? And did you change any of the default packages being installed?

If I for the moment assume you chose BTRFS, Limine and KDE Plasma, then the bootloader will continue after 5 seconds if nothing is selected manually. It is also here you will be able to see and choose snapshots, so you can go back if any updates/installations went awry.

CachyOS Hello autostarts unless you disable it.

Which is all to say that ‘going to the bootloader’ is expected and what it should do.

Unless you created UKI images you need a bootloader or boot manager.

Whether you configure it to be automatic, shorter, “silent” or invisible may be another subject.