Originally Posted by
green granite
The question asked was why a failing battery should cause it.
I answered the question by saying it wasn't related (which it isn't).
The CMOS battery has nothing to do with the network save for potentially disabling an onboard NIC (which would cause more problems than this) or changing the chip timings such that the NIC is powered earlier or later in the boot process. Either way, it's not really connected (certainly not enough to be a factor in your issue).