I have a Gateway system that has the OS in a protected partition on the hard drive and you use F11 to do a system restore. In the process of recovering from a system crash I lost the functionality of the F11 key during the boot process. Everything is there to restore the operating system on the hard-drive and I do not have the recovery CD's.

Does anyone know how a person can execute the OS recovery with out the Cd's or the F11 functionality or how to restore the F11 functionality so that I can do a restore.

Have you tried a USB keyboard? It maybe worthwhile trying that.

I have not tried a USB keyboard, but the one that I have works fine, it is not that the keyboard is faulty, it has worked using the F11 key in the past. I have just lost the functionality of the F11 key due to formatting the primary partition on the hard drive and now I have not a operating system to access anything.

Have you tried http://ultimatebootcd.com/ ?

and you have read this
http://support.gateway.com/s/Manuals...ps/8510406.pdf

I checked out your links and I have read the gateway support link. The ultimateboot link looks interesting, but I have not been able to recover the functionality yet. I had trouble with the download.

It may be a 1 shot deal. After that the F11 functionality is gone.
BTW: Gateway requires the OEM DVD/CD when doing a F11 recovery.

Yes, That is what they told me, I was not able to create the recovery CD's even though the recovery partition is still there, I just cant boot to it to do a recovery. They want me to buy new recovery disks when I already own the software, I just can not get to it to make the CD's.