Daskid

Hey guys! I was wondering if any of you have a Gateway Recovery Disc for the 7330GZ Notebook? Or maybe for the series 7000?

I need a copy of the recovery disc, would you guys be able to provide me a link to a torrent file for this? I really need it badly.

Gateway wants $20 for this CD and will take 10 business days to process. Sorry, but I can't wait that long...

Please help....

Thanks!

kanundrum

you can use a normal windows xp cd to ger ur laptop back up. and just dl the gateway drivers

mtxblau

Wouldn't it be easier to find a torrent for Windows XP, and burn the drivers from the gateway website onto a separate cd? The xp license should be on the bottom of the laptop, yes?

Daskid

Tried that. But it seems that it won't boot up with any bootable windows XP installer. So I'm really frustrated. I also tried making a bootable CD. It boots up but can't read the contents of the CD. It only displays the system files on the boot CD and not the windows installer.

Done that, but still no luck. The laptop won't read the windows installer.

Or maybe somebody can guide me on how to create a boot CD that will also access the CD drive for me to browse to the windows XP installer.

kanundrum

hit me up on msn tonite. ill send you over a iso image that I know works. hit me up 6pm pST

Daskid

Thanks man! I appreciate it. I'll be on at 6pm PST.

mtxblau

That's weird. What is it doing exactly when you boot?

My wife's laptop is a gateway... I do recall now that it has a funky boot system.

If you're planning to trash everything, it'll probably be easiest to use something like this:

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Destroy all the partitions and the MBR, and let a fresh, non-gateway XP install cd try its magic.

It's not much worse than a system cd, anyway, since that overwrites everything. And you might get some hard drive space back.

Daskid

Ok, I'm not really good at this so please bare with me. :D

When I boot the laptop with the cd, it goes to A:\ and that's it. I can't seem to access the CD drive even when there's a CD inside. I also tried changing prompts from A:\ to F:\ and only A:\ and B:\ are available with the same system file contents, like COMMAND.COM, KEYB.COM, CONFIG.SYS, etc.....

How do you make it to access the CD drive?

And is that link for linux? I don't know a thing about linux....

mtxblau

What CD are you booting with, exactly? Please explain where you got this boot cd from or how it was created.

What it sounds like is a barebones DOS bootup, without loading MSCDEX.EXE for the cdrom drive. To do an XP install like that, it needs mscdex and one other file... can't... remember... otherwise XP will complain the HD isn't set for caching and install will go really slowly...

...but again you need to specify how that cd you have came into existence, because if you're booting from it, it's loading. And it's loading, then the CD rom drive is by default accessible... unless something else is going on.

As for the system rescue cd, it's pretty straight forward. It is Linux, but it's pretty simple to use. Download the ISO, burn it. Load it into the computer. The first few prompts you hit enter (boot menu: enter. Keyboard layout: enter). It'll get to a point with a long paragraph of information, but the gist is (since you're only working on the hard drive) is to type 'startx' and hit enter.

It'll load up a GUI (windowmaker to be specific). It'll open with a console window, don't close that. Double click the icon that has a hard drive, and that'll load gParted, which will let you basically erase everything on the drive (there is a help thing here). Basically you pick everything and choose delete. Save you changes, and it'll wipe everything.

Once you're done, X out of that, and in the console window type:

shutdown -rt 0 now

and it'll reboot.

From this point the drive is clean, and you can use a clean XP cd and boot with that, and install from there.

EDIT: I should mention that if you're not comfortable doing this, then don't. It may just be easier to buy the CD from gateway. I'm going on the assumption that if given the option to use a restore CD, you might as well completely redo the hard drive and start from scratch (because the gateway disc completely redoes the partition table and MBR and does not prompt you to save anything). If you're trying to save whatever is on the laptop, definitely do not do any of the above (and probably don't use the restore cd, either).

Daskid

^^ Thanks for the tutorial!

But I found a solution on how to format the C: drive. I'm using Win98se boot up disk. I've already wiped the C: drive and it's ready for the install. Now, I'm left with on how to run WinXP setup files on MS-DOS. I found a webpage that instructs me on how to, but my computer, boot CD, and WinXP intall CD does not have SmartDrive. It says that without it, the setup would be very slow. Do you know on how to get this SmartDrive thing?

BTW, thanks kanundrum for sending me a copy of the ISO file. But it still doesn't boot up the computer and load the WinXP installation files.

I'm still searching the net on how to make this thing work.

Thanks for all you help guys!

kanundrum

hmmm gotcha. ill see what i can think of.

Daskid

Thanks! I really appreciate it! :D

mtxblau

Timeout.

How are you burning this? Are you dragging and dropping the iso onto the CD? Or are you choosing something to the effect of 'burn cd from image'?

---

The issue with using a 98 boot disk is that it only formats in FAT32 (or worse, FAT16 if you don't enable extended drive support or somesuch) nor does it recognize NTFS partitions. NTFS is much more efficient, especially with bigger drives (20GB+)

tC9o9

i dont know if the problem has been resolved or not, but i have a gateway MX6960, and i have the recovery disk if you need to borrow it.

im in diamond bar.

Daskid

I'm using Nero to create a copy on a CD-RW. What I'm planning is boot with Win98 boot disk, install Win98 OS, then upgrade to WinXP, then convert FAT32 to NTFS. Do you think it's ok to do that?

I appreciate it!

No, it's not resolved yet. I'll let you know before the weekend if I can't make it to work. Then I'll just drive up there and run the recovery disk. Maybe make a copy of it too. :D

I'll PM you by Friday. Thanks man!

tC9o9

o ya, let me know, i can make a copy of it.. i never even thought about that

Daskid

LOL! Ok thanks! :D

mtxblau

So, in review, you're closing all the wizards in Nero, choosing File --> Burn from Image, then selecting the ISO (hopefully)?

As for upgrading via that path:

http://labmice.techtarget.com/window...n9xupgrade.htm

I would highly recommend *against* it, but if that's the only path, make sure to read up on that page - those are all the known issues MS is aware of using the same path which you're trying.

Daskid

^^ Thanks man!

After 5 format processes, I finally got it working! I also used another version of the XP installer.

I appreciate all your help guys!

mtxblau, I'll just PM you if I encounter more problems. Thanks for all the help!

tC9o9, I guess I won't be needing a copy anymore. Thanks though!

kanundrum, thanks for sending me a copy! :D