Deskpro EN won't remember its BIOS disk configuration

I am trying to build a Linux mailserver out of one of these machines
but at a cold boot I get a message that the machine has noted the two
drives and I must hit F1 to save these. I do so and the screen goes
black and a moment later the lilo boot takes off just fine.

I have gone into setup (F10) and re-re-re-saved everything in there
about the machine, but at every cold boot I still get this damn need
to hit F1. This won't work with a machine that will have no keyboard
or monitor. The machine keeps time/date fine so I'm presuming the cmos
battery is still OK. Is there a second battery? Or is there a key
combo to force the bios to drop the boot-time nag screen? Perhaps
re-load defaults and then re-sert them?


Regards,

rl