Try:
AUTOFAIL=YESin your config.sys
More stuff:
You get the pause because it's being run synchronously during config.sys processing. It was set up this way working on the assumption that there may be things dependent on the interface being up later on in startup. If you look, you should see a line:
CALL=C:\\OS2\\CMD.EXE /Q /C C:\\MPTN\\BIN\\MPTSTART.CMD >NULThis is the line that starts up the network. MPTSTART calls \\mptn\\bin\\setup.cmd, which actually initialises your various tcpip network interfaces. Since this statement is CALL= and not RUN=, config.sys processing pauses until it's completed. If you don't want it to pause, you could try turning it into a RUN= statement. However, if later on during the boot something which needs those interfaces resolved one way or another attempts to complete before mptstart and its children, you could get unusual results;)