The guy I talked to didn't think the exercise of changing settings again would get me anywhere, so he talked to his supervisor. I was told that a form would be emailed to me to fill out, with my specs like MB revision and CPU, and they'd set up the same system there for testing. My comment that searching Google would reveal others with the same problem was accepted but not with any excitement. I did volunteer to work closely with a Taiwan BIOS engineer to get the settings fixed, which was also acknowledged as having been heard.

Always willing to believe the semi-believable, I'm now waiting for that form so things can continue moving forward...