Black Gateway screen, XP won't boot??

[Cephalopod2]

Hi, this is my first post on this board, but I am looking for some serious help. I would greatly appreciate any help any of you may be able to supply.

My computer was acting up one day (all the icons got really huge and it ran really slow, (assuming some sort of memory problem)), so I restarted it. It has done this before in the past and I just restarted it to restore it to its normal state. This time something different happened though. On restart it brought up the black Gateway screen, the fan kicked in and the LED in front showed it was thinking (all normal), but instead of bringing up the Windows screen next it simply sat on the Gateway screen and the fan continued to run with the LED no longer thinking. I can't hit any of the funcition keys to try to load in safemode or anything. Nothing is functional. This would continue indefinely if I let it. I tried shutting it down cold and starting it back up, but the same thing resulted. after a couple days and about 20 restarts it finally, for some unknown reason started up. I used it for a few days and then again had to restart. Same thing.... Eventually it started again, but I have no Idea what is causing this, and I am afraid to restart my comp now. Any suggestions????

I have the following comp:
Gateway 420 GR
Processor Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 515
Operates at 2.93 GHz; 1 MB L2 Cache and 533 MHz FSB
System Chipset Intel 915GL
Memory 512 MB DDR (400 Mhz), dual channel expandable to 4 GB
Memory Technology Four DIMM sockets on the motherboard that support the following:
2.5 V (only) DDR SDRAM DIMMs with gold-plated contacts
Unbuffered, single-sided or double-sided DIMMs with the following restriction:
Double-sided DIMMS with ×16 organization are not supported.

4 GB maximum total addressable system memory.
Minimum total system memory: 128 MB
Non-ECC DIMMs
Serial Presence Detect
DDR 400 MHz and DDR 333 MHz SDRAM DIMMs
Support for dual channel memory mode

Video Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900
64 MB Shared Video Memory
Audio Intel High Definition 6-Channel Audio (5.1)
Hard Drive 160 GB (7200 RPM, Serial ATA, 8 MB Cache)
Optical Drives DVD +/- RW, Double Layer Multi-Format:
Write max: 8X DVD +/-R, 4X DVD +/- RW
32X CD-R and 16X CD-RW Disks
Reads 12X max. DVD-ROM Disks
Reads 40X max. CD-ROM disks
CD-ROM Drive: 48X max. Read
Media Reader 8-in-1 Digital Media Manager supports the following:
CompactFlash Card
IBM MicroDrive
Memory Stick
Memory Stick Pro
SmartMedia Card
Secure Digital(SD)/MMC
USB 2.0

Thanks in advance for anyone that can help!!

[Cricket]

From what you posted it sounds like the motherboard is defective (but it's possible one of the other components is causing this). If it's still under warranty, contact Gateway and see if they'll help.

Cricket

[glc]

To get rid of the full Gateway splash screen, you can turn that off in the bios setup - disable "silent boot" or enable "show diagnostic screen" in the boot options - look for something similar.