I am working on an older 486 Gateway. Before I can do anything I have to get into the bios to make changes regarding hard dive settings. Every key or key combination I have tried has not worked. (I think I have tried them all), even moving the reset bios jumper on the M.B. I always get the same screen messages: Phoenix Bios (tm) a486 version 1.01 LP486i2 opti 495 reference id 04 keyboard stuck key failure......I get "one beep" & then last of all, "missing operating system". Does anyone have any suggestions? Appreciation!! Harvey

Try these two. Ctrl-Alt-S Ctrl-Alt-Ins Mesich

Try disconnect the harddisk, floppy disk, printer, com device. Remove any othe cards you are having, machine should have only video card and memory, then try booting

Thanks guys, but still no luck.

Try these:- Ctrl Alt Esc or Delete or F1

You probably have a hard drive larger than your bios will reconise & need an overlay program . Go to the Hard Drive manufacturers site & download the free utility that most have , to help you get your HD the way you want . ( Including ghosting , writing to 0's , overlay , low level format etc ) Sometimes if a drive has been setup with Partition Magic or similar it takes a write 0's to fix it. Maxtor's is called MaxBlast , http://www.maxtor.com/Maxtorhome.htm Seagate's are DiscWizard , DiscWizard Starter Edition & DiscWizard Online http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz_utilities.html http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html Quantum's is DiskManager , now owned by Maxtor . http://www.maxtor.com/Maxtorhome.htm IBM have a selection , such as Drive Fitness Test . http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm Fujitsu's is OnTrack DiskGo , http://www.fcpa.com/cgi-bin/goFrames.cgi/support/su_drivers.html Western Digital's is Data Lifeguard Tools , http://www.wdc.com/service/ftp/drives.html#dlgtools Samsung's is ClearHDD Program , http://www.samsungelectronics.com/support/hdd/utilities/utilities_03.html

Maybe the BIOS is right, and your keyboard *has* a defect. Did you ever try another one?