I have a gatrway laptop, cant get past the black entering setup screen.cant get to bios either. thanks

some one must have put in a boot password to your laptop,
follow this:
When booting up, enter your BIOS setup (usually by pressing the F2 key at the appropriate time).

Locate the BIOS Password section and turn the ON STARTUP password to off. There is no standard setup for BIOS, so I can't give you exact instructions.

If this does not work, try:
remove cell & start your pc you will here beep...beep...beep...

then turn off your pc & restore your cell.Start your pc and
password is removed.

there is a battery on motherboard,a button cell,you can try removing that and start computer, then put it back, bios settings will be lost.
you can also try removing any hardware like ram,if you have two,when system is off,turn on , it will prompt for changes , enter bios and try remove password.

Dear beanbean,
This "lovely black screen" is a BIOS password screen. This shows up because somebody has set a boot-up password in the BIOS Setup. If you're lucky, the BIOS Setup is still unprotected, and you can access it as follows:
When you turn it on, look for something that says "Press [button] to enter Setup" or "Press [button] to enter Setup Utilities." Press the corresponding button on your keyboard, and you should enter BIOS Setup.

Now two things can happen. Either you are permitted to access Setup, or you are prompted for the password.
If you can access Setup, navigate to the Security tab and clear all set passwords.If not... then you can either reset BIOS by unplugging the computer, taking off the back, and removing the CMOS Battery (unrecommended), or you can call Toshiba support and ask for the master password (Most manufacturers have a master password, which will allow you to access Setup and remove the boot-up password)
Hope this helps,Ericthecmh

I think you need to enter the bios. when the system boots look for the message to enter the bios or setup . it might be "del" you need to do it before the message disappears and sometimes the message does not appear for long, inside the bios setup you should be able to disable password requirement.

Keep hitting escape while starting up. Message will say there is an error and hit F1. Hit F1 and you'll enter bios.

The BIOS password is removed by the BIOS configuration, you need the BIOS password to get into the BIOS configuration.But if you do not have the BIOS password then you need to construct this dongle device.
TOSHIBA BIOS PASSWORD DONGLE
You can build a dongle that plugs into the printer port.Purchase a 25 pin male D sub connector and solder insulated wires to the various pins as listed below. The pins are numbered on the connector
http://www.tilman.de/sonstiges/toshiba/dongle1.jpg this is a picture of the finished dongle


Wire the pins as follows :-1-5-10, 2-11, 3-17, 4-12, 6-16, 7-13, 8-14, 9-15
Plug the finished dongle in the printer port and power up the laptop. The password will be reset, go into the BIOS configuration to check the BIOS password, you may have to disable the BIOS password..
OR there are other places that will sell you a "Key" for a price.
OR you can provide "Proof of Ownership" to Toshiba, and they will sell you a "Code" to remove the Anti-Tamper, Anti-theft, protection.

try removing the bios battery AND the rechargable battery for 10 minutes. Install both batteries and try again

looks like a BIOS configured password. You can try opening up the machine, and locate the BIOS battery to remove and wait a couple of minutes, say 2 mins before re-inserting it again.
Hopefuly, It should reset your bios config and let you get past that screen.

Cheers
Wats

Upon loading press F2 or del to enter bios setup and change the settings to display the acer welcome screen and the one you said about Microsoft logo and white box with green lines, you cant by pass it because it's windows loading screen

If you want to boot your computer with disk you need to set first boot device as your cd or dvd rom.
For that when you power up the computer press F1 or F2 or "del" then you can enter in bios.
Then go to boot option then set first boot device as your cd ro dvd rom .then save settings and exit.
Then put disk in rom then it boot with that disk.
Let me know if you need more assistanse.
Thanks.

its a very common hardware fault with these laptops, can you open setup or bios? that is opened right when the power is turned on the and screen says press F2 to enter bios or setup, if you can't enter bios then you have a faulty motherboard, usb ports don't work either? (usb keyboard and mouse don't work?)