Hosed with Gateway CMOS problem

[DnSTech]

On a Gateway computer the CMOS has been changed and an bootup error message reads

CMOS settings wrong
press F1 to run SETUP
press F9 to load default values and continue

The problem is that the box has USB keyboard and mouse ports ONLY (no PS2 or serial). Any ideas?

 

[gwhite]

Are you wondering why your getting the errors or is it you can't select either option? The error message may be caused by a failing battery on the motherboard. Once powered down it loses some or all of the settings in bios. F1 opens the bios and lets you change settings one by one. F9 sets it at the factory default (recommended). I've worked on a couple of these and they were meant for usb everything. If the keyboard won't respond to pressing F anything, try plugging the keyboard into a different port. I found this always gets the keyboard back to working. When you press F9 and it reboots and all seems well, and then if you get the same error after a complete power down, the battery is probably shot.

 

[DnSTech]

Yeah, I'm not so concerned about the CMOS message issue as I am the keyboard issue. Neither the keyboard nor the mouse will respond pre-windows. The on-board USB ports will not recognize the keyboard or mouse so I can only use the aux USB ports on the front of the box. I've tried both of those ports without success. The computer will not recognize the devices so I can't input the F1 or F9. It is stuck at the option screen. I'm thinking about flashing the BIOS to see if it will restore the on-board USB ports. THen maybe the keyboard and mouse will be recognized and I can input what I need to in the BIOS. However, I am concerned that if I flash the BIOS I will need to input something from the keyboard and it will not respond leaving me in a worse situation than the one I'm in.
Any thoughts?

dB

 

[gwhite]

It depends on how gateway made the bios update. Some companies will set uo the bios disk so all you have to do is boot from it and it does its thing. Others are a lot more "manual". You have to have input from the user to complete the update. Hence no keyboard no go. I understand what gateway was trying to do but I've never been comfortable with usb keyboards for this reason. Have you tried it with no mouse or plugging the mouse into the keyboard. It may be worth a call to gateway and see what they say. I'm not sure if you picked up a cheap usb add in card and plugged into that if that would help. You would have to take the chrome card holder off the usb add in card as I think all you have is half height card slots.