Help! PC hangs at boot up. Hangs on start up screen

[mbillings]

Hi,
I am having trouble booting up my computer. This is an old Gateway, but still in good condition. Everything has been working fine until about 3 weeks ago. I tried to uninstall my operating system to reinstall it. I had too much stuff on it so I wanted to get rid of some stuff. So when I tried to reinstall it, for some reason, when I hit the power button on my hard drive, it goes straight to the 1st screen and hangs there. It will not go any further. This is what I'm seeing on the very 1st screen:

GATEWAY
                                   
INTEL                              BOOT MENU: <F10>
INSIDE                             BIOS SETTING: <F2>

I hope this makes sense. I've tried hitting F10, F8, F2, F12, F everything, nothing happens. I tried to Ctrl+Alt+Del a few times, nothing happens. It just hangs on this screen. It's like something is holding it up from moving forward from this screen. I really hope this makes sense to you and I hope someone can help me. Any suggestions will be very helpful.

[Allan]

I don't know what you mean you tried to uninstall your OS, but let's not worry about it right now. Change the bios so it boots to the cd first, insert your OS cd in the drive, reboot and when the install process starts choose the option to format first.

[patio]

You may also want to try a PS2 keyboard on it if it's not letting you into Setup...

[Allan]

You may also want to try a PS2 keyboard on it if it's not letting you into Setup...

I'm getting tired - didn't even see that. Time to log off for the night - early tee time tomorrow anyway

[patio]

Hit 'em straight and long...and less often than last time.     

[mbillings]

Sorry Allan for the confusion. I'm posting this for husband. I don't know a thing about computers. I know that he took off Win. 2000 and was trying to put XP on the computer. That's what he was trying to say. I don't know how to get into the BIOS, but I will let him know. When we both looked at the computer, he could not get into anything. It just hangs on the boot up screen so I don't think he can change the BIOS so it boots to the cd first, unless you can tell me know to do this. 

I'm telling you, when my husband hits the power button, it goes straight to the GATEWAY boot up screen and it does not move. I think we will end up getting a new hard drive because this is driving me crazy. I appreciate the information, but this will be our last try.

[patio]

Have him tap F10 repeatedly on powering up and before the Gateway Logo...This should take him into the Bios.
Once in there that's where he can set it to boot to CDRom first.

Page up Page Dn the arrow keys and the spacebar are the most common keys for navigating around in there...

[mbillings]

Ok Patio. I'll have him try this again, but like I said, when I watched him try to fix this, hitting F10 before did not work.    It's funny because as soon as he pushed the power button, the Gateway logo screen would be already on our monitor screen. *sigh* It's like the Gateway logo screen is stuck and it never goes away.  When he pushed the button to power up, we don't have time to hit F10 because the logo screen is already there. Does this make sense?? lol I'm sorry if it doesn't, but this is the best way I can explain it. Even my husband is scratching his head on this one. The Gateway logo screen is stuck there. We tried to Ctrl+Alt+Del to see if it will boot up or get rid of the logo screen, but it doesn't. It just stuck!!! I hate repeating myself, but I don't know what else to say. 

[patio]

Even if it comes up right away have him still repeatedly tap F10 for about 45 seconds while it's loading...