Try unplugging the hard drives (just leave the floppy). Sometimes a bad drive will cause a bios to hang...

I'm 99.5% sure that's the problem. There's still one teeny-weeny issue. The laptop is doesn't allow manual replacemant of the hard drive. I'd have to send it off. And that'd cost a lot of money.

Moved to Distributions because it seams to fix better there.

Yuck. I wonder what "non-replaceable" really means... If you're brave (or figure you have nothing to lose) you can see if you can take it apart a little bit and gauge whether or not you can do it yourself. It sounded like it uses a standard hard disk and they just put it together in such a way that might be difficult to replace... Maybe you'll find that you just need a special tool or something... Hmmm.

Or try asking a local computer shop (not like Best Buy -- more like a joe schmoe shop that might be able to give you a better price or find out from Gateway what the REAL problem is)...

Maybe my parents know someone. I'll ask.

PS: I'm not some nerd who lives in his Mom's basement, I'm a twelve-year-old who knows too much about computers.

I'm AM a nerd. I actually would probably just take it apart because that's what engineers do. Then later you realize it would have been better to leave it alone.

But an engineer's motto is "If it isn't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet!"

Apparently my mom went to grad school with someone majoring in computer stuff.

I thought engineers were supposed to engineer and make and fix stuff.

Occasionally. But you can learn an awful lot about something by taking it apart. The trick is putting it back together....

Engineers do a lot of upfront design work and the like. But one of the great attributes most engineers have is a curiosity for how things work. It's a blessing and a curse...