Note that most of the people with this problem can't get to the logon screen - it stops at the "date screen"
Doesn't sound like it to me and that is not what I was responding to. I was only responding to the erroneous idea that I quoted.
Your example sounds like they are in a BIOS setup screen. What are they doing in there? Maybe that would be a consequence of using Shift-F8 too soon? Why not boot? If there is no boot selection screen, try the workaround that I linked to.