When Windows 8 has a bad shutdown, is causes hard drive errors. This has happened to me a hundred times at least, my best fix is to use Hiren's Boot CD -> Dos Programs -> Hard Drive Tools, So you have a Gateway, then use GWscan, on the 3rd page of Dos HD Programs. Or you can download GWscan from Gateway yourself and stick it on a bootable CD or Flash Drive.
Hit "Choose Disk", select your main system drive from the list, and run the first 2 tests, the SMART test and the Short HDD test. If there is an issue with your drive, it will then prompt you to run the Long test, this takes usually an hour. I would do it anyway if I were you.
After this is done, you need to run a CHKDSK on your Drive, so you can use either your Windows 8 Install DVD or any Windows 7 install DVD, it doesn't matter 32 or 64 bit.
Boot from the Install Disk, and go into Troubleshooting. Pull up the Command Prompt, it'll be Drive X:
From there type
CHKDSK x: /x /r
Where x = your main system hard drive letter, it may not be C so check using dir c:, d: .e:. etc until you see the Windows Filesystem scroll. Then run CHKDSK on THAT disk only. After that, restart your system and let it finish ANY Auto Repair it might try, it should finish quick after the HDD has been repaired.
Note: If you have an SSD, then none of this will work, but you STILL have to run the SSD tools on your drive, get them from the MFG of your SSD drive.