had a thunderstorm hit last month and another last week,surge protector did it's job but after I began to have start up problems. Very slow to start up screen and sometimes would not boot past windows xp screen. When I pulled power plug to restart I got a screen asking me to choose a mode to restart in. Unit was very slow to restart in normal but I could go to safe mode. When I tried to use system restore I had no restore points when I know that a week before I had checked for new pts.
At 1st I thought it was a HD(western dig 200gb) problem but scan disk showed no errors. I used Western Dig. diag tool and ran full disk diag w/no errors.

I searched forums here and thought that Xp itself was corrupted so I did a Xp repair install. Unit started up slowly and i did get to windows and I'm now trying to get back to normal settings.

I googled my model machine for problems and found a thread saying that that gateway systems are built with enough watts to power unit as built with no add ons. I have added another cd/dvd drive, scanner,linksys wirless adpter and printer. My PSU is a Bestec 300 watt 12v .

To the point, is it possible that my PSU was damaged? and could that be the cause of my problems?
From what I read in the hardware forums I should upgrade to atleast 400watts and to be leery of cheap PSU.

A long thread I know but I wanted to lay evrything out as best I could

Thanks to all

Have you tried a virus check?

Pavesa

Mcafee scan performed day before last power surge. Adaware and etc done at same time

Thanks for your input

1st of all, pulling the plug on any machine can damage the motherboard. All that has to be done to shut down a PC safely is hold in the power button till the PC powers down.

I've upgraded many machines to XP and have never (touch wood), ever had a problem with power supplies. I added DVD writers and larger HD's as well as USB devices.

If you need to do some scans, you can click on the link in my signature and good free ones are listed plus instructions on how to run them.

Your PSU could have been damaged, but run all the spy and AV checks and then do a free on-line scan:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/xscan.php
and remove all it finds....give it a chance to update the definitions and it will run.

See if your PC runs better and post back

Some HELP in posting on Cnet plus free progs and instructions
Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back your result

Thanks for your post.

I couldn't get my installed Mcafee to run but I downloaded Avast from another unit and ran a boot scan with neg results.. Adaware and Spybot were also neg.
I'm still having problems starting up. 1 start evrything goes ok and next I get a black scren with no start up. I can't get my usb linksys adapter up and running and so I can't get online. My usb adapter is showing up in my computer as a removable drive and also where it should be as a network adapter in device mgr.
Are ther any other hardware scans I can to to narrow down my problem?

I appreciate all your help,