Franc:

By "properly" I mean in Normal mode; i.e., no DOS-like screen asking me
to choose from a range of several boot-up options. And only one of
those options; namely, Safe Mode, allowed me to boot at all. If I
chose Normal from the list, it wouldn't boot normally, but would
restart again and go back to the same list of bootup options.

No, I was not aware of that non-existent DHCP server issue you
mentioned. But, now that you mention it, there were several occasions
when, instead of going into Safe mode, the PC would just show a blank
screen for about 2 minutes before finally completing the boot up.
This seems to describe what you just wrote about. If that is indeed
the cause of the hanging and the "Safe mode" problem, can you tell me
how to fix it? I don't recall having configured anything at all for
the NIC, so perhaps it configured itself incorrectly. The NIC is a
brand new Belkin F5D5000. Please let me know. Thanks