Well- after lots if troubleshooting and getting nowhere, I backed up my files through Target Disc mode and erased my harddrive. I reinstalled everything back from factory settings through internet recovery back to Maverick, then reinstalled Big Sur. It works fine now.
September_Skies
Users receive reputation points by contributing quality content to the forums.
Posts include post and replies published on the forums.
Post authors can mark replies as Accepted to indicate successful solutions.
Apple Developer Forums admins can mark replies as Apple Recommended to indicate an approved solution
Last seen
User for
Post
Replies
Boosts
Views
Activity
In the end, I ended up erasing my hard drive. My computer would never boot out of safe mode no matter what I did. Since that was not a good long term solution, I backed up files, wiped it, restored it to Maverick, then reinstalled Big Sur. It works fine now.