I have a Dell T5500 and it was working fine until a few weeks ago when I experienced some sort of power surge I guess which damaged the on-board ethernet port. While the ethernet port stopped functioning I was still able to use the computer fine just without network access (installed a USB wireless adapter and all was good). However, last night the computer would not start. It just turns on the memory and CPU fans high speed and the network activity indicator and # 2 light flash and then the 2 light stays solid and the computer doesn't boot at all. In fact, there is never even a signal sent to the monitor indicating it is even trying to boot up. I have replaced the CPU battery and stripped out the memory and anything else which could have been a problem, yet the computer still fails to boot.
I was hoping there is some way for me to bypass whatever requirement exists for the on-board NIC to be functional prior to the boot process. Or possibly remove the on-board NIC adapter (which includes a USB port) to keep the error from preventing the computer from starting. My problem is identical to this post which never was never resolved. ----> Image may be NSFW.
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