Do you have any drives/ partitions set up to load at boot other than the main linux partition?

A common issue can be if linux is trying to mount a partition specified in fstab (the config file that lists all the hard drives to be loaded) and it can’t mount it, it will go into emergency mode. It does this as it assumes the drives are critically important and to prevent any damage to your system. You can mark non essential partitions as “nofail” in the fstab file so that linux continues to boot even if those partitions are unavailable.

If you’d added a USB drive or another hard drive to auto mount at start up and its not available to linux then that might be the issue. Reinsert those drives and linux should boot. Alternatively you can login using emergency mode and edit the fstab file yourself if you know what youre doing. The offending drive can be removed/commented outthe fstab file or the nofail option added.

If your linux install is set to mount your windows C: partition (for file access in linux for example) then its important to know the drive can be locked out by windows. Windows “fast startup” is a very common cause - it basically means windows doesnt shut down fully, it does a fake shutdown (hibernates), and doing this locks down the drive, preventing any access to the C: drive including in linux. If this scenario applies to you, boot into wndows, disable fast startup in the control panel and then try to reboot into linux.

It this works it is still worth using the “nofail” option in fstab for any non essential drives. I personally dont auto mount my windows drive at all anymore; I have it visible in my file manager but manually mount it (just clikcing on it does it) when I need it.