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What has probably happened is that your cooling fan stopped working. That results eventually in the hardrive overheating. It is a common problem with Gateways as I have since learned. It is a design flaw, and I suspect an intentional one.
The plastic fan blades on my Gateway actually melted. I lost 20 gigs of precious Data (that is a lot). My computer was 14 months old. I replaced my hard drive, and I had to reinstall an Operating System (Windows). Due to the fact that my warrantee had expired I received little help from Gateway.
It wouldn`t have mattered if the warantee was still in effect. The warantees do not cover lost data. I also came to the conclusion that the Tech Support at gateway is abominable. I actually lost my cool with them via e-mail. I actually swore at them in my e-mail.
I do not know if that is what happened to your computer. I do know that there are services which provde data recovery. It can be very expensive. For me it will be quite a bit. I do not have the dough right now, but eventually I will get my data back.
I hope that it is less serious for you.