On Friday, July 21, 2017 at 2:51:26 PM UTC-4, Oren wrote:
On Thu, 20 Jul 2017 21:50:48 -0500, Terry Coombs
wrote:

Terry, I looked back at this and read comment replies.

It's an Aspire 7540-1317 laptop , and it belongs to my daughter .
They got it in a storage bay auction , and it apparently was used as a
terminal - no OS . I had to initialize the hdd , but it won't access the
BIOS/setup screen .

It pops up an error screen as follows :

Broadcom UNDI PXE 2.1 v11.4.1 followed by a copyright etc

then :

Base Code PXE 2.1 v1.1.0

PXE E61 media test failure check cable

The BIOS is set to boot from a server. "Boot on LAN" - turn that off.

PXE-MOF exiting broadcomPXE ROM

Broadcom - has a special space in the ROM. Maybe that could be a
"custom' bios?

OS not found

Looking for the server on the LAN/WAN


The CMOS battery is out, remove the travel battery and remove the
power cable jigger. Take a break. Boot it next time with just the
power cable from the wall.

That could be. But usually if it tries and can't boot it moves on to other boot choices. I guess you can edit those choices, limit it to just LAN, so maybe that's it. Does he have a bookable CD/dvd in there?