I bought a pentium 4 2.88 CPU to replace the 2.0 CPU I have had in my machine for the past 4 years or so. It is a Gateway machine, with a socket 478 CPU pin architecture.THe replacement CPU arrived from my ebay seller today - obviously used, but seemed ok. I popped it in to the motherboard, made sure it was firmly seated, and the retention pin was back down. Put back the heat sink and fan, and tried to boot the machine - nothing. Not even a POST test that I could hear. The lights on the machine (the backlit lcd under the power button) are normally green when the machine is on, turned orange. THe monitor never responded. There was some brief disk activity but that was it. Replaced the old CPU and all is fine.Could this be a DOA chip? Can this motherboard not support it? I have an older BIOS (circa 2001) - according to CPUID - would updating that help? Am I hosed?

Probably the BIOS does not support the newer CPU.I would say try updating to the latest BIOS, but the chances of Gateway adding newer CPU support to an older BIOS is pretty much non-existent I would think.

Are you sure the motherboard is compatible with the new CPU? I have a similar machine (Intel 845 MB) with a FSB of 400. I thought the highest upgrade in this series was the 2.6GHz processor. I'm thinking the 2.8GHz is a 533 FSB. Just curious.

No I am not sure at all. I think you are right, in that the system bus speed in my BIOS is reading 400MHz. I think the chip may be incompaitble - color me stupid when I bought it. Even worse, I tried to flash my BIOS using a windows xp download from intels website, and now I get a 'CMOS checksum error on boot, and it has only two options: F1 to enter the BIOS setup screen, and F12 to network boot (not applicable). So I think I have hosed my computer. Thought I was safe, as I had a BIOS flash on a floppy that worked just fine earlier this evening, however I have restarted numerous times, and it keeps taking me into the CMOS error/ BIOS setup on boot.HELP!! I am locked out!!

Well, making progress of a sort. I have solved the 'checksum error' and was able to re-flash the BIOS back to a working copy that I installed earlier this evening.However, now it get to the 'windows did not start normally' Dos type screen, then proceeds - polls the two CD/DVD drives and BANG - crashes back to the BIOS bootup screen. I am still locked out, but in a different place in a different BIOS!! AARRGGHHHI have tried every setting in the BIOS relating to those ide drives (I have two hard drives, and two optical drives). I can't be sure, but it looks like it is failing while doing something with the optical drives. They are set to 'auto' properties in the BIOS. Have tried ATAPI removable, and ATAPI other, as well as the obvious 'CD ROM'. Nothing. Any thoughts on what might be going wrong??

>I am still locked out, but in a different place in a different BIOS!No, you're locked out somewhere in the boot process of Windows. BIOS is long past you at that point.Can Windows boot in safe mode? (Hit F8 before the Windows boot screen appears.)If your drives worked with this BIOS before there should be no need to change their BIOS settings. And not finding the optical drives will not keep Windows from starting up. It obviously has some problem with the mainboard, on account of the reflashed BIOS.Also: don't try to stick CPUs on mainboard's of which you don't seem to know the specifications. Who is the board's manufacturer and which model is it? Do you have a mainboard manual? What does it say on the matter of CPU compatibility? Might be a good place to start.Regards,http://www.bremmekamp.com/img/misc/avsim.jpg

Have you tried going back to the old CPU yet? If there IS an incompatibility between MB and CPU bus speed I don't think there is anyway you will get it to work.

Well, true the BIOS has LOADED at this point, but I feel that some of its settings are being 'drawn upon' for the first time as windows attempts to load. Safe mode does the same thing.I am back to the old CPU, and it was working just fine after the replacement. The system even worked fine after the first BIOS change (downloaded from Gateway). It was the BIOS update from Intel that screwed everything up, and I have since re-flashed the BIOS back to the latest Gateway update.Problem exists when I arrive at the 'Windows did not start normally last time' screen. No matter which choice I make, - it fails shortly after while spinng both optical drives. I have them recognized in the BIOS, but There are many settings to choose from, and the permutatins run into the thousands. My BIOS settings currently are:IDE Controller :BothPCI IDE BUS Master : EnabledHard Disk Pre-Delay : DisabledFor both optical drives, I selected drive type as 'auto' and BIOS gave me:LBA Mode Control:EnabledMulti-Sector Transfers: DisabledPIO Mode : Mode 4Ultra DMA : Mode 2Cable Detected : 40 Conductor.My intuition is pointing to something in these settings which is screwing up my life.Again, the behaviour of the machine is it tries to load windows, then fails by quickly rebooting as soon as it tries to access these optical drives.