Sad to hear. I have succesfully repaired many Profile 4 and 4.5 systems. The Profile 4.5 systems are farmed out to another computer support site, where they know very litte about the Gateway pruducts. The Gateway site will even dump you off to links that just do circles with no viable solutions or access to drivers for the higher ended Polaris MB . Since the over heating issues usually involves a burned out HV transformer at the top of the inverter boards, heat is definately an issue. Now I have been drilling two 1/4 inch holes in the back part of the LCD screen case at the upper and lower corners. This helps to let some heat out thats also generated by the CCFL tubes at the top and bottom. The metal case frame where the display is mounted had ventilation holes, but once the metal plate holding the motherboard was placed on it, the vent holes were all blocked. Even for that, I have had a few video chips get fried, and there is also the issue of swelled and blown caps just above the CPU socket. ALL these failed units have badly clogged fans too. Removing the heatsink fan assembly and looking underneath it, you will see a very thick blanket of dust, totally blocking the cooling fins. Every unit I work on, I always clean the fans, set the screen saver to power down in 15 minutes, then hybernate after 30 minutes. This shuts down the unit saving fan time and also prevents overheating when its sitting idling. On eBay, they still sell inverter boards, and I have repaired about 100 so far, and even sold some refurbished ones on eBay. Heat buildup inside is not just at the screen, but also very obvious for internal components to swell and blow. I replace the blown caps on the motherboards and in some cases, even the MOSFET chips that are also shorted. Removal of these big chips involves a very high wattage soldering iron to heat up the big base tab thats soldered to the motherboard. These MOSFET components were discontinued by their maker, but there are other makers for a substitute for the MOSFETs. This is true for the Harappa based Profile 4 and Polaris based Profile 4.5 motherboards. For me to fix these is simple and routine, and can bring systems back to life for a few more years. I even put SATA hard drives in the Profile 4.5 systems as they have a higher FSB speed at 800mhz, and SATA as well as IDE hard drive interfaces. I also install mini PCI wireless lan cards inside, with antennas that are positioned on the sides of the frame. There are small internal metal shields, one on each side, inside, these are removed to help signal strength for the wireless card. Still good systems, provided you are able to figure out what to do when they suddenly fail.

Good luck, Gateway has been aware of this problem for at least 4 years if not longer, when my profile 4 when kaput i found sites online with literally hundreds of people who's pro 4 did the same thing, i junked mine when i found out having it fixed wouldn't help because the lcd inverter would just go out again due to design flaw and excessive heat build up. Gateway is garbage, tell everyone you know, not that it will help alot because Gateway has so many billion corporate, hospital, etc accounts, we're just the little fish they don't care a damn about.

Because I buy bad ones, repair them, and sell them, I have not lost any money yet. I agree Gateway isn't the best brand, and the Profile 4 is poorly designed as to cooling. Not sure if you had seen the Profile 5, but they look terrible, and have hardware issues with the screen support. I have 3 of these waiting to be fixed and expect maybe only one out of 3 working correctly, after stripping missing and bad parts off the other units. If you know of anyone who has the bad Samsung SIC850 or SIC850 A inverter boards, I buy bad ones for $10 each. The components on the inverters are hard to find, especially the HV transormers, which are two types, and one usually shorts to the metal shield that wraps around it.

if anyone has any of these machine that you want to sell please email me, you can also contact me through aol im username ev3rcl3ar
ev3rcl3ar@aol.com

Check out eBay as there are always many there for sale. I don't usually ship mine as its a bit costly over $40 usually. Instead I fix and sell at my garage sales. I now drill two 1/4 inch holes on the black portion behind the silver bezel, at the top left and right corners as well as at the bottom two corners. They allow air to enter and heat to exit. Just that little bit can help to prevent the inverters from cooking to hot. In most cases, the top two HV transformers will be the ones that fail, and its usualy just one of them that arcs through the insulation. I blame that issue on Samsung, not Gateway, as the display circuits are all Samsung parts.

Bryan, I know you will say why am I working on this old machine but I have liked this design since the first day I saw it. Lust at first signt. Anyway, I had the same issue as everyone else regarding the LCD. I followed your step by step instructions for this work around,and it works like a brand new BMW I mean Chevy. Thanks for your post, and now, to replace the LCD will be the next challange. Thanks again,
RP

Even an old LCD display that is bad, may have its back light lamps removed. These are held in by one tiny screw located where the HV wires come out of the display top and bottom. The lamps are VERY thin glass and are attached to a thin metal reflector. They slide out and can be inspected to see if they are broken. The ends of these tubes will darken like those standard flourescent tubes you see. Once they darken, they may cause an overload or shut down the HV from the inverter. I have about 10 bad displays here and they have ony the backlight lamps being salvagable. The actual displays are bad and either are all white or broken. One time inverters would fail as soon as they were powered up, and it ended up that one of the very thin glass tubes had a broken end causing it to short to the metal reflector. Now, I drill to three 1/4 inch holes at the outer corners of the black plastic on the back top and bottom corners of the displays. These added holes allow some heat to exit and ventilate the display area.