I can sympathize because I'm almost in the same position. I have an
old laptop that won't boot from a USB stick and had a non-functional
DVD drive. I found an exact replacement in Singapore for the broken
DVD/CD drive in the mail this week and I know it will boot from that
because it did before.

But before I ordered the new DVD I looked for some way to start an
installation without using an external device. I know I once had a
utility that allowed booting an .iso on the hard drive, but I couldn't
find it. Whether that could be used to install an O/S I don't know.

Anyone have ideas?

According to the manual, you need to press f2 then escape to install via
a cd.

Just adding to bruce's comment, you will want to do that DURING the
bios/boot screen when you see the message about system settings. Your
online manual is here:
support.gateway.com/.../index.htm

tried that didn't work

Registered Ubuntu User: #31138
Registered Linux Machine: #503490
Ubuntu/Linux since 2010-01-21

I'll bet that it can boot from a floppy drive. Google will get you to sites
which will tell you how to boot from floppy, and switch to CD.

I tried a windoz boot floppy the thing just goes to hard drive

Registered Ubuntu User: #31138
Registered Linux Machine: #503490
Ubuntu/Linux since 2010-01-21

I think gord_lib was suggesting trying to get a floppy that will boot
the ubuntu live cd. maybe try this for starters:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SmartBootManager

But you still need to get to your boot options. And if you can do
that, maybe just from the cd will work. When booting, did you push F2
and esc at the same time? I would try pushing them repeatedly during
the boot process. And I would try all combos... pushing them
repeatedly together, pushing just esc repeatedly during boot, and
pushing just F2 repeatedly during boot.. and see if anything happens.

In the manual (<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SmartBootManager>)
there are instructions on how to remove the hard drive, and they look
relatively simple. There's always a chance you could damage
something, but if you are willing to take that risk, you could also
just remove the hard drive and try to boot from a cd as a last resort.
w/o the HD, you should force the laptop to default to the next boot
option. If booting from CD is not supported, you can still try
booting from a floppy also with the HD out. (if the floppy is really
old, it may be dead/degraded beyond readability, and you will need to
make a new one.)

Tried the remove hard drive thing hoping to get the CD drive before I contacted
you folks will try again after using the link to get a Linux boot disk the f2
and esc keys have nearly been beaten to death. And if I kill this Blankety blank
thing I will have at least tried.
Thanks and wish me luck will let you know one way or the other.

Registered Ubuntu User: #31138
Registered Linux Machine: #503490
Ubuntu/Linux since 2010-01-21

I looked up the specs on your machine and with a 500 MHz Celeron and
max. of 192 MB of RAM it must be somewhere around 9 years old. I think
the problem is at least partly in the BIOS and partly in the chipset,
which probably doesn't even have an upgrade available now. In other
words, if you don't have BIOS support for booting from flash or
external CD/DVD Drive it doesn't matter what keystrokes you hit it
just won't work.