Alright so I'm sitting at one of our computers last night and all of a sudden the power goes out. This afternoon I go to turn the computer on and its not getting past the GATEWAY screen to boot up.

After trying everything I could think of, I searched around the internet where I saw that someone suggested resetting the bios via the jumpers on the motherboard. My motherboard says to remove all jumpers to reset and then (1-2 normal) (2-3 config). I take the jumpers off and start the computer up and of course all I get is beeping. So then i turn it off and place the jumper in the 2-3 configuration and turn it back on. Amazingly, this seems to fix it. Rather than staying on the Gateway screen, the computer tells me I dont have a keyboard plugged in (which i promptly plug in) and then it tells me there was an error shutting down and i tell it to start in safe-mode. I got to the windows logon screen and thinking the problem had been fixed, I shut it down normally so I could reconnect all of my usb-devices and whatnot.

And then I turn it back on and its back to the Gateway screen and I cant get it any further! Ive tried it with different combinations of hard drives including drives that I KNOW work and no drive at all! Same thing every time. It just stays at the Gateway screen .. no matter what buttons I push, no matter if theres a cd in the drive, and no matter the bios jumper settings I try.

Can anyone figure this one out?

It's a gateway. Just kidding. There may have been a spike that damaged the board. That said, try to get into the BIOS and default it from within the BIOS. Then disable the freaking logo screen and watch it boot to see if you can determine where it is hanging.

Might of fried the PSU or other compnents. You can get a tester under $10.00.

It does sound like a spike....

But to be safe give it the old break down

-Un-Plug it
-hit the power button to discharge the caps in the psu and on the board(you will see a quick flash of the leds)
-Disconnect everything[dont touch the cpu] (CD/DVD, HDD, FDD, any USB devices)
-Remove and re-seat the memory(1 stick for now if you have more leave the extra out in a safe place).
-Use the clear cmos procedure(without power should be a clear and normal position, jumper clear and leave it there for at least 5 seconds, take out the battery while you do this if you can)
-Power up with nothing but video 1 stick of ram. NO HDD or CD yet.

See if you get the NO OS insert system disk message(you may also get a cmos checksum or similar error....just enter the bios and restore defaults and save). if so, power down and add things back one at a time. First add back any ram, then you hard drive, and then the CD/DVD and FDD.

If there is a busted part this should help you weed it out. Some times parts just need a re-seat(fingers crossed)