For quite some time now, when I turn on my 3 yr. old Gateway by pushing the power button (I always shut down comepletly at night), the pc will power up but thats it. The POST does not run and nothing else happens. I am forced to push and hold the power button 5 seconds to power down and try again. Some time it works and sometime I have to do it several times for it to work. This machine is well taken care of, patched, updated, defraged, virus protection, firewall ect...I, about a year ago, attempted to solve the prob by formatting and it did no good. I am thinking slow harddrive failure here but I understand it could be power supply, motherboard or BIOS as well. How can I troubleshoot this problem ? Sys info: ME/2K Dual boot 20G harddrive, 1.1G Athlon, 512MB PC 133, 32MB GeForce graphics, AMI BIOS version 7.0.

I may be way off ,however could this be related to your CMOS battery being dead ? Thay say they have a average life span of 3-5 years, however I hardly ever hearing of anyone having to repace it. The CMOS coin battery is located on your M.B. and this helps your PC hold the CMOS settings while the PC is turned off. Just a shot in the dark, could be a number of other reasons ! Good Luck Nick

I agree with Nick....I would start with the battery.