I know next to nothing about computers. My daughter is at college....she has a Gateway computer....I don't even know what Windows program it has....(it was purchased brand new in August 2003).......but it was working fine since she went to school in August. Last Friday she shut it down, she came home for the weekend. When she went back on Sunday evening and tried to start it up again, it doesn't. It just pulls up a blue screen. There are no icons, no bar across the bottom, no start........nothing. What happened? Is this something simple or something big? Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. We know so little about computers that we don't even know where to head with this problem. Thanks so much.

Try booting into Safe Mode options:

After the power-on and BIOS POST or your Logo screen repeatedly tap the F8 key or hold the Ctrl key before Windows starts.

The first option to try is: Start Windows in the Last Known Good Configuration

If this doesn't help then try: Start Safe Mode and then System Restore to a date prior to the problem.

If neither of these help then what is the exact Gateway model? Did it come with Recovery Disks?

If there's nothing on the screen you can't do any boot options (ie do you not get BIOS Post info showing before the blank screen?) - it would seem to me that the monitor is not connecting to the PC - try again to physically reconnect Pc to monitor