I too have a Gateway LX6810-01 and the exact same thing happened to me. After the power button was depressed, the CPU fan ran on high, the hard drive was spinning normally, power supply fan was running, no BIOS screen appeared, and there was no monitor activity. I initially suspected maybe a RAM chip had gone bad or, less likely, the power supply was faulty. I examined the motherboard and saw no obvious damage, tested the RAM chips individually, and then reseated them. After reading this post, I immediately tried a different power supply and that indeed was the problem. Apparently the system was reacting to a working albeit defective power supply. I installed a 750W Corsair CX750M CP-9020061-NA. Unit is running again and actually performance has really picked up - believe it or not the machine is much more responsive, even still running Vista. I suppose putting an OEM 400W power supply is partially how Gateway made a profit selling this machine - the 400W power supply is woefully underpowered for a system with these specifications. A close look will also reveal the OEM power supply is very cheaply made.
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