Access BIOS on Gateway 7422GX (not a password-bypass question!)

My wife's 7422GX simply won't successfully POST as far as I can tell. When I boot it up, the Gateway splash screen peeeeeeeeels onto the screen and then nothing.

If you hit F2 (the BIOS key) right when the splash screen comes up, then it says "Please Wait..." at the bottom. Well, we DID wait. For over an hour! And still nothing.

I dismantled it far enough to take out the CMOS battery (or what I assume is the CMOS battery!) which is a small button cell battery. I don't see any jumpers to reset the BIOS.

ONCE after I had taken out the battery, I started the computer and DID get the double-beep POST Fail code, followed by the prompt to Continue or Enter Setup. I entered setup, reset everything to factory defaults, rebooted, and got into Windows safe mode! GREAT! So I restarted the computer and it froze at the XP login screen. Upon forcefully re-booting it, we are back to square one.

The CMOS AND Power battery are still out. I've waited 2 minutes. I've waited 20 minutes. I've waited 1 day and then 2 days. At each try, the computer refuses to POST or complain that the battery is "dead" and allow me to enter setup.

I have removed the hard drive and the RAM at different times - ANYTHING to get the double-beep CMOS error. But I cannot get it to "fail successfully" again.

Is there anything I can do besides the "remove the battery and wait" idea? Is there a secret key to boot from the CD-ROM (like some laptops have to update the BIOS from a floppy disc?) or some other kind of "back door"?

* * * * *
If you want the longer story, here it is:

My wife was watching a video on YouTube while surfing the Old Navy site. It got about 27% into loading a flash page when her computer froze. The mouse icon was an hourglass, and wouldn't move on the screen. After waiting several minutes, she "hard killed" it (held the power button down for several seconds). After that, she was no longer able to get past the Gateway splash screen.

She is also a member of an online parenting forum called "Ovusoft" (ovusoft.com) that reportedly has old software that has apparently downloaded trojans onto people's computers - something we didn't know about until recently.

We have updated Antivirus (McAfee virus scan) on our PCs and have never had any virus infections on any of them. Also, our OS is up to date, and she has not installed any new hardware or software recently.

 

Well, any kind of virus and trojan is just going to hurt the operating system and programs. It would not prevent a laptop from POSTing.

Here is an idea though, if you could please. Remove the AC adapter, battery, and CMOS battery. Then hold the power button down for 30-60 seconds. Put the CMOS battery back in, and ONLY plug in the AC adapter.

Sometimes charge gets built up in notebooks, thus causing parts to not work. That method fixes that problem.

It is entirely possible that your Windows installation has been destroyed by viruses though. It seems like we have two issues to worry about, so lets focus on getting the computer to turn on constantly.

You might also want to check out MemTest86+, which could detect if your RAM is failing...that might explain the initial computer crash. You'll want to run that test for at least four hours.

 

Thank you Greg,

First, the reason I suspected viruses was that someone mentioned in passing somewhere that some new viruses erase people's BIOSes. Today with software that updates and flashes your BIOS from within Windows, that seemed perfectly feasible to me.

I disconnected all power, removed the CMOS battery, held down the power button for over 2 minutes. Funny how long that seems when you are glued to the computer.

I then reinstalled the CMOS battery and plugged in the AC adapter (no battery). Same deal With or without the HD installed, I only get a splash screen.

I then repeated the above steps, to be sure.

Right now, it says "please wait...."

Grr. :-( This is so frustrating. Thanks to you and anyone who will try to help.

 

Sorry to hijack you thread but i'm curious what virus' can wipe your BIOS?

I've actually never heard of such an thing and would really like to read about it.

If nothing else works for you though you can make a Linux Live CD/DVD to get an OS to run through your Optical Drive. That will get you an OS so you can attempt to do other things. If its really your BIOS gone bad you might be able to flash new ones into your chip through linux and then you can keep linux or go back to windows (your choice)

 

If it was even POSSIBLE to boot the computer BEFORE the BIOS, then maybe that would work.

If your computer won't POST, all the live CDs in the world won't help!

And - I have a BartPE, and a Linux Livecd ready to go, also one with MemTest86 as mentioned earlier.

But if you can't boot - you can't boot!

 

Have you tried blind flashing the BIOS?

I doubt it will work with a gateway (as others haven't had any luck) but its worth a try.

And sorry about mentioning the live CD, i saw you were still getting to the XP start up i should have read deeper into the situation and saw you werent able to get that anymore

 

How would I do that? (Blind Flash the BIOS?)

In my original post, I asked if there was any kind of backdoor flash update key. I read on some laptops it is like F12 or something.

I've searched online all over the place, even looked at the owner's manuals on gateway.com (yuck). All to no avail.

 

FN+ESC
FN+B
WIN+B
WIN+R
FN+R
CTRL+ESC

(stolen from johnksss' post) seem to be the most common ones. I've only ever had to use CTRL+ESC, but one of the others might work for you.

But dont expect maricles, because gateway uses the most convoluted BIOS settings on the planet.

Another option is to try a BIOS forum
BIOSMAN or wimsBIOS and see if you can get specific help from there. They are a lot more specific in their knowledge than we are typically over here (due to specializing in BIOS)

 

When I hit FN-ESC (actually just ESC) then the splash screen disappears, and I actually get a regular bootup screen:

PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0
--
Bios Version NS.00.02
CPU = Mobile AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3400+
639K System RAM Passed
1022M Extended RAM Passed
1024K Cache SRAM Passed
System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
Fixed Dick 0: IC25N080ATMR04-0
ATAPI CD-ROM: TSScorpCD/DVDW TS-L532A
Mouse initialized



Press <F2> to enter SETUP

(then I pound on F2 and NOTHING)

 

Code took part of that as HTML

If I hit F2 quick enough, it says "Entering SETUP . . . " and THEN nothing.

 

its been a couple of days,with no replys, have you found a solution to your Gateway 7422GX problem? I have the same issue. ive done everything you have done. i even put new memeory in. with no results.