I have a 4 year old Gateway Desktop running a 450mghz P2 processor with 384 megs of SDRAM. Afterunsuccessfully trying to install a CDRW drive, I put the PC back to it’s original configuration. When trying to install the CDRW drive, the PC froze about the end of the POST process. After returning all plug and play devices to their original cables and configurations, the PC now freezes halfway through the POST process. Now I cannot even get into the “Setup Screen” before the system freezes. There are no error messages. All cable connections and jumper switches appear to be correctly installed and/or set, but I cannot get the PC to boot even when using a Win 98 SE boot floopy disk, or the Win 98 SE CDROM. Suspecting that it could be a BIOS problem, I have downloaded an updated BIOS from Gateway, but apparently will need to have the DVD ROM be able to read the restore disk to be able to install the new BIOS in DOS mode. Gateway seems stumped.
How can I get the system to boot upin any mode? Even if I have to re-format the hard drive that is not a concern, but I need to be able to get the PC toa point where I can do that.
Thanking you in advance for your assistance.