After replacing the entire motherboard, the system hangs at bootup stage with a message saying "Setting system clock",

I read that the system write time info to the hardware upon shutdown, so in this case, we have a fresh bios and it did not go through a shutdown update process.

Please help me how to fix the problem, in a step by step, especially how to boot to a stage where I can modify some of the boot options.

I have had this happen on motherboards with bad clocks or ones that had poor Linux support. I don't think the problem could be attributed to the actual time stored on the motherboard, since even if you have never booted an OS on the board, there is still a valid time on it from the factory.

What is the model of the motherboard? Have you already set the time in your BIOS configuration?

This is the detaild specs of the workstation, the motherboard was replaced by HP Support themselves, but they do not seem to know what is the problem. I will get you the part number for the motherboard later on, but they assured me that it is the same as the old one. Yes, I did set the bios clock. And if I place the hard disk on another workstation it works fine, and if I place the hard disk of the other workstation, I get the same problem, so it is definitly the motherboard, or some settings on it

Is there a possibilty that the old bios has UTC time and the new has Local time? and would that hangs the system boot?

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/q...1/11976_na.PDF

No. All that would do is make the OS display the wrong time. It wouldn't cause it to halt during the boot process.

Cheers.