This sounds like a mother board failure. During service of any kind, the
manufacture replaces the complete mother board.

If you want to troubleshoot a mother board, I would wish you a lot of luck.
These are very sophisticated, and having just a DVM and a scope would be a
waist of time to really get in to it. Even if you were able to locate a bad
parts, other than a simple cap or resistor, you would have to be able to
source the parts, and have the soldering tools to change it.

Many of the semiconductors on these boards are proprietary to the
manufacture. A number of them contain firmware in which, even if you have
the programming equipment for, you would have to have a source for the
coding that goes in to them.

On a laptop, there are only several things to try when troubleshooting it.
You have the RAM modules, screen assembly and its back-lamp inverter supply,
and maybe a daughter board for some options. The rest, such as the IR ports,
are generally built on to the mother board, and are not changeable.

The only thing you can do without spare cards on hand, is look for an all
reset button, and try that. You can also use a DVM and verify that the
mother board battery and the power supply are good.

One thing I have seen in the odd laptop, is that if the main battery, or the
mother board battery is defective, the computer may not start or run. Check
these first.

--

Jerry G.
=====

"Lorene" wrote in message
news:uvfKd.2848$Eh5.585@trnddc04...
I have a Gateway M305CRV two weeks out of warrenty that simply stopped dead
in its tracks.
I wasn't doing any thing out of the ordinary and all of a sudden nothing
worked. The mouse froze up. The CTRL-ALT DEL would not bring the Task
Monitor up or allow me to reset. So I turned it off and back on again.
Now it only lights up the LEDs above and to the right of the on/off button.
In fact it circulates through the LEDs. The fan also comes on. That is all
it does. Nothing on the screen.
It seems as if the BIOS is in a loop waiting for something.

I have tried the following not necessarily in this order without success.
Plugged the monitor from the desktop into the back -- didn't help.
Took the battery out and let it set for an hour. Plugged the AC line in --
didn't help.
Reseated the RAM -- didn't help.
Reseated the HD -- didn't help.
I took what I assummed to be the CMOS battery out and turned it on without
the CMOS battery -- din't help.
Put the Diver CD in the drive and turned it on -- didn't help.

My questions are"
1. Does anyone know what order the BIOS does its work?. I would assume it
checked the RAM first. It knows when the battery is running low because I
let it set there circulating through the LEDs until the battery lite turned
a blinking red and finally shut down.
2. Does the BIOS normally, or can it, write to the display without RAM being
present. Nothing gets displayed at the moment.
3. Does anyone have a source for the Service Manual for the M305 laptop. Do
I really have to pay for it. IT would seem to me if Gateway won't help fix
it they should at least provide a source that tells you how to take the
thing apart correctly.

Please don't suggest talking to Gateway. I tried that and all my arguments
fell on deaf ears. I believe I have a case for the machine still being under
warranty since I had a months worth of trouble when I first got it. But I
get the distinct feeling from my conversations with their support people
that they really don't give a grunt.

Reading through the news groups and internet it seems like I'm not the only
one whose laptop ended up in this state. But so far I have found no
solutions.

Right now I purposely took out the CMOS battery and let the main battery run
completely down and am going to let it set for a day or two.