Hi I just bought a p3 650mghz gateway from ebay...I took it out of the box connected connected a power cord and a wireless mouse and keyboard. I powered it on, and it went all the way to where you must input your password, this is where I noticed my keyboard was not working; so I turned it over and noticed the reset button. So I got the keyboard to work the screen saver was on at this point and then the power cord came off the computer! I reconnected it and powered it on but now it checks the disk and keeps restarting. It does not even get to the password screen. Can anyone please help. I would greatly appreciate it! ;)

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When you say it checks the disk, do you mean the computer runs chkdsk / scandisk or are you talking about the drive detection during POST? If the computer gets to the poing where chkdsk / scandisk starts then POST passed. Make sure you have the keyboard and mouse connected properly. If you feel comfortable opening the case, check to see if the the hard drive data and power cables are seated on the hard drive connectors and make sure the data cable is seated on the motherboard connector. While inside the case, check all the other connectors (Power supply, RAM, optical drives, floppy, all circuit cards, fan connectors, power switch, etc). Things can get jarred loose inside a computer during shipment and this often can cause problems like what you are describing.

Which version of windows, please? Did you get a Windows CD with the machine.

When the power cord has come out of the back it has probably corrupted data on the hard drive, causing the system to have problems starting up. You may need to boot from CD or startup diskette and load Windows over the top of itself to correct problems.

If you were extremely unlucky the power interruption could have caused damage to the hard drive itself, but that's rather unlikely.

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