Gateway XP Desktop PC - the ellusive Factory Recovery key

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Wed Jan 19, 2011 12:19 am

For some deranged reason the factory recovery key combination for Gateway PCs seems to be a national security secret. I have been Googling for an hour to find it.

All the forum posts I've found says it's ALT+F10 and all those threads end with a bunch of people saying that doesn't work (and I tried it - it doesn't work).

Unbelievably, in this age of mass information, no one seems to know what it is.

Well, I finally hammered away on my own and figured it out, so for the benefit of others - and in the hope that Google will eventually index this page so others will find it - the magic keyboard combination is....

ALT+F12 (press repeatedly during the POST screen while the "Press F10 for boot menu" is on the screen).

Then you will get a brief message saying "Press F11 for Recovery". IMMEDIATELY press F11. You only have a couple of seconds.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Wed Jan 19, 2011 12:38 am

Isn't there an option in the bios to turn that on so its displayed on the screen?

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Wed Jan 19, 2011 10:53 am

I'm surprised nobody figured it out till now. That's one of the first combinations I would have tried. Gateway seems to march to the beat of their own drum.