Sadly, no solution was found so I decided to cold boot and move on.
I tried to boot with a number of command line options to no avail.
dis_ucode_ldr
mitigations=off
kvm-intel.nested=1
If anyone knows a way to resume this image, reply to this thread.
I kept a copy of the paused image and can try again, for next time this happens to me.
TIA,
Eyal
