Having a strange problem with a Gateway PC

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

Having a strange problem with a Gateway PC
Gateway Model G6-300
Motherboard is 4000286 (I believe Intel) also called PII AST

I did a fresh install of the Win98 on this PC for a friend, (virus issue)
After the install, everything was working fine.

I decided to upgrade the Bios to the newest version

After reflashing the Bios to the newest version (P18) the computer would go into post mode and just sit there on the very first screen. No beep was audible and although you could hit the F1 key to attempt to get into the setup screen, the PC would just sit there forever and do nothing, it would even advance to stating that it was "preparing to enter setup mode", but that is as far as it would get.

I saw a similar post on this forum where a person had removed the video card to get around his problem, so I gave it a shot.

I installed a PCI video card and everything works perfect. If I insert the original Video card (STB Nitro AGP) I'm back to no booting as referenced above.

I can take another AGP card (Nvidia Gforce 2) and install it and everything works perfect in the Gateway PC.

If I take the video card that is causing the problem (STB Nitro AGP) and place it into a totally different PC, it also works perfectly.

I talked to Gateway and they were no help at all.

And shame on me but I do not have a backup copy of the original Bios.

I was wondering if anyone else has run into this problem before and I would like to find someone that has an earlier Bios version as I am sure that the problem would be fixed.

The original version of Bios was:
P11 (4A4LL0X0.15A.0014.P11)

The version I flashed was:
P18 (4A4LL0X0.15A.0023.P15)

Well after numerous hours of phone calls I was finally able to get a Gateway tech to send my a copy of the P11 Bios.

After flashing everything was back to original and the problem no longer exists.

Hope this helps anyone who ever has the misfortune of running into this.

[NickS]

Thanks for posting back with the answer; as you say, it could help someone else another day.