im looking at this topic too. And everyones got the right questions or answers. but could you give us more information.
So I'll organize everyones stuff and correct some,.
When you power on, press the PAUSE key, to give the computer an extra 10 seconds, to get everything ready, prehaps the drive isn't at the point where its spinned up and ready to check the drive. You can push any other key to stop the pause. This is universal on all computers not just gateway
1) The 64 bit DVD could not have possibly worked in Vista, since its a 32 bit operating system, 32 bit cant use any 64 bit files, so you can usually only upgrade by making a clean install, but it will save your vista and you can dual boot.
2) Like Area 51 and a couple others said, please tell us you have checked the bios. Since the time we had more than two devices in our computers, like a floppy drive and a hard drive, the bios has usually had a boot priority or boot order in the bios menu. (Which is accessible by either pressing F2 or F12, when you turn the computer on, just press them faster than 1 press a second or you might miss that)
-----> The BOOT ORDER, must have your DVD rom drive as the first boot device. I wouldn't be suprised if gateway has set it as default not to use the DVD ROM as boot up, maybe they can milk more money out of gateway owners for service calls.
-----> So you can change this in the BIOS Menu , look for the option, check every catagory until you find something with boot and check it.
3) Do you have two DVD rom drives. Prehaps you are putting it in the wrong drive.
Last note is this, you should have tried all the above by now and fixed the problem.
But Im really hoping that four people didn't reply to this question because you simply didnt burn a dvd properly. HOw to test you did.
ASk yourself, when was the last time you burned a dvd, and is that dvd working?
Go and burn a DVD with something like sardu / or some sort of boot cd hirens (might as well have it) to see if its a bad iso you have or please god no a bad dvd burn. Ill throw dvds at you.
Couple things to note.
If you burned the DVD on a different PC, and you are trying it on another. I was suprised because that happened to me today, i thought it was an old wifes tale because ive never encountered any real compatibility issues with dvds in different drives, since a burner 2x cd was 899$ to buy.
I had 3 boot cd's i bought over to a customers house,3 of them would not boot up, one time one of the three did boot up but I couldn't get it to do it agian.
- 2 of the DVD's were Lightscribe , but he had a lightscribe drive
- Another one was a Maxell DVD + R
So I decided to skip that for now and install windows, and bang, it has no trouble recongizing the disc, it was a dvd rw imation some shitty brand. So the point is that can be the issue.
And agian, tell me your not on your last dvd and have tried burning another copy.
KK