pcfixed :
warning! your gateway is overheating have the dust removed from the fan emediate and the thermal greace changed now or lose it
its not your screen, its not ram, its not hard drive, its not cables but its the gpu the graphic card, do that and it will be fine again.
Well -- thanks to all who gave info: It was software-related -- nothing more/nothing less. Not dust, screen, cables, ram, or the gpu. After talking to Gateway and running the bios, they indicated that if the problem did not occur while the screen was showing the bios info, it was not hardware related. It didn't happen. I went through and removed software that I had installed prior to the problem, and it hasn't done it for over a week now.
To pcfix: I don't know if the software removal was coincidentally connected to removing dust from the fan, but I'm not complaining. Your fix would have been the closest to any other possibility, and I appreciate the suggestion.