Bios/Motherboard problem

[joey0904]

I recently read in another posting, that the bios controls the PC startup before Windows load and this got me thinking that I may have a bios or motherboard problem but, I do not have the experiance to troubleshoot this type of problem.

Here is the problem: First off, I have a Gateway brand PC (OEM); P3, 128RAM, 10G HD, running W98 SE & a cable modem. The problem arises at the Gateway splash screen which is the very first thing I see after power on. Normally, when this screen displays, I see 2 messages at the bottom of the screen: "Press TAB to view system messages" & "Press F1 to enter setup" as well as a load status indicator bar at the top that decreases as the load (?) progresses. Sometimes all I get is the splash screen and NOTHING else (no messages, status...). When this happens, the system stays at the splash screen until I power off and re-boot! When I am lucky enough to get the messages and the status indicator, it takes several minutes from that point til I see the Windows logo screen. (It used to take about 8 seconds til about 7 months ago...)
Any help would be greatly appreciated as Gateway Tech support does not know what is causing this behavior and recommend taking it in which, thanks to many horror stories, I'm trying to avoid.

[BertImmenschuh]

The first thing I would do, from a cold power-off start, is either press Tab until it gets rid of the splash screen and you can see the process working or press F1 to get into the BIOS. Somewhere in there is a setting that will disable the splash screen and you can see the boot-up process. There must be something loading or not properly loading which is causing a problem.

[joey0904]

I followed your advice and this is what I found;

I pressed the "Tab" key which allowed me to view the process and saw that the system is detecting my hard drive, "legacy mouse", "legacy keyboard" as well as my CD-ROMS and then at the bottom, I saw "Event messages logged, enter setup to view"

In setup, the only log I could find was "DMI Event Log". In there I found; "Pre-boot Error: Keyboard not functional"

Could this be the problem eventhough it (the keyboard) works fine in all my apps after Windows starts up?

I checked Device Manager to see if I could discover anything there....nothing.

I went into System information to see if there were any device conflicts....nothing

But during these steps I still encountered the initial problem and had to re-start several times.

I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere though, what do you suggest next?

[BertImmenschuh]

The only time I saw this happen, the keyboard and mouse plugs had been reversed in the back of the computer. Gateway, Dell, Compaq, and most the the major brands use ATX-style motherboards and the keyboard and mouse are PS/2 style. Their plugs are the same size and easily plugged into the wrong socket.

[lawzer]

I've even seen with a Gateway that the keyboard/mouse HAD to be plugged into the wrong ports!

[imcurious]

in your bios there is a setting that says HALT ON ERRORS select none see if this does anything for you ..........hope this helps..