Remove on-board NIC on boot up to remove need to hit F1 on PC

[Fossy]

When I re-boot, eg from VNC remotley this Dell XPS PC stops at (NIC
Failure) and I have to hit F1 to continue the boot. So I cannot re-boot
remotley. I have replaced the on-board NIC but in the boot sequence the
on-board NIC gets looked at. I have switched it of in the setup menu
but cannot forece the PC to ignore it, and so cannot boot up into XP
without pressing F1. Is there a way to edit the MBR or should there be
a simpler solution?

TIA Fossy

 

[Shaun]

Have you disabled it in the bios..?

 

[Fossy]

I have disabled in BIOS, I thought that would fix it, but it still
reports and needs the F1 to proceed.

 

[Shaun]

Check your bios battery, don't know all your problem but just a shot in the
dark.

 

[Fossy]

Shaun

Good thought, i've just cheked it with a meter and it looks ok, the
time is always ok in the setup menu also. I would remove the onboard
NIC but it is too integrated I think, at least I can't find anything to
remove.

 

[Shaun]

Most of the time when you get stoped at the f1, is when something in the
bios has changed and just the act of going into the bios when it prompts for
f1 and saving and exiting. Does the onboard nic work..? and why don't you
use it, or does it work and you still get stoped on boot up.
What was the bat voltage.

 

[Fossy]

Shaun

Batt 2.8v, I've changed it anyway to see if it makes a diference as
that looks like the place that something could be wrong. I've set the
on board NIC off in BIOS again but it still sees it and stops with an
F1 to proceed. The NIC stopped working after a lightning strike, I had
to change the DSL router and the NIC card in the PC failed. I have put
in another Network card in a spare slot and use that.

Its a mystery.........

 

[Shaun]

Sounds like the nic is damaged in such a way as to no be able to be
disabled. Does your bios have the setting to skip all errors and boot
anyway. Might not work even if you do have it. Later on.
Last ditch, have your tried to reflash the bios..? That should not work, but
you never know what got glitched.

 

[Fossy]

Shaun

Thanks you've cracked it. There was an option to not "report Keyboard
Errors". I had dismissed that as just really being keyboards...but i've
set it not to report and PC boots ok now. Sorry to have been so long to
reply but I went strait on to re-load Vista to fix the Media Player and
have been (and still am) wrestling with that. Thanks for your help.

 

[Shaun]

Glad it worked out. Pc's can be a pain, later on.