Then I went to the intel site, and thinking that I had a working BIOS updatee on floppy that I was safe to try one of their updates for this motherboard. This was the Winxp (ie runs automatically and updates on reboot)
All hell broke loose there. Got checksum errors and wouldn't boot etc. Fixed those finally, and I re-flashed (several times now) my Gateway update BIOS.
Problem is, it still won't let me in. At first it wouldn't recognize my hard drive, and I saw that all the BIOS settings were disabled. I finally got it to see the drives, and indeed it gives me the 'windows was not shut down properly' screen - however, after I select either startup normally, or safe mode, it pauses then reboots to that screen - loops back and forth. I noticed the lights on my two optical drives are lit when the BIOS crashes, and thought that the ide settings may be at fault, but I can't see how. Have been testing it for hours now, cannot get past this loop. I don't know what exact settings to try - I have an NEC CD-RW drive, and a DVD drive, as well as two hard drives. The Hard drives are master and slave on primary ide, and the opticals are on the secondary.
Totally stumped on this one - would love any suggestions - even more if they work!
ADVthanksANCE for any feedback or ideas you may have!
Cheers.