Jeff Vian:
Use the interactive startup ... Press i when the prompt appears, then skip the pcmcia part.
Timothy Murphy:
I've occasionally tried this as an experiment, but never managed to get it to work on my Sony Picturebook laptop. I've tried "i" and "I" but neither seems to have any effect.
Incidentally, what exactly does one do if it does work?
Figuring out what moment to press the key seems to be a black art, and it always seems to be that it notices you've pressed the key too late for whatever issue you had a problem with.
When it works, you get to say "yes" or "no" to each process that would start up as you boot (all the parts that have the [failed] or [ok] lines as it normally boots up). Once you've had enough of playing boot-up demigod, you can "continue" on booting with the normal boot sequence (what's normally started up, will start up, when its turn comes along).