thanks...i fixed the puter
as i mentioned before...i believed it to be a hardware problem...many people have been suggesting that it could be a driver problem...and to update the driver...but how would i have been able too? :) ...anyways...thank you all for your patience and kind help...but I found the problem...my girfriend had hooked up the printer into a (what i thought was dead) usb port in the back...turns out when she hooked the plug in she had inadvertantly bent a pin to touch metal at the top of the port resulting in the puter sensing a ground and shutting down all the usb ports...i unbent the wire...removed the cmos battrery for a few minutes...replaced it...and rebooted...low and behold...I can now get into the computer....i also upgraded from 64 megs to 128 megs and my puter runs pretty sweet...well...for a gateway astro anyways....thank you everyone for your help...im out :)