squee666 Wrote:yeah either your hard drives has eventually went due to old age (like mine did in thread many year ago on this site)
or you dropped it and have damaged the read heads on the platters
So my only choices now are to either buy a new harddrive or a whole new laptop correct?
And would it be pointless to open it up and try to fix it if its loose?
you should probably use an ubuntu live disk. To see if it can find your hard drive.
Disable everything in the BIOS that is not needed for booting. Sound, Wi-Fi, NIC, etc.. But it sounds like it is your HDD. Can you put your HDD into an onther PC just to check?
xero1 Wrote:Disable everything in the BIOS that is not needed for booting. Sound, Wi-Fi, NIC, etc.. But it sounds like it is your HDD. Can you put your HDD into an onther PC just to check?
yeh if you can test it do it
if it was loose its an easy repair just attach it and pack it with something
hard drives are cheap and easy to replace
Incadude Wrote:you should probably use an ubuntu live disk. To see if it can find your hard drive.
I've tried booting it from a windows xp, windows vista, and a windows 7 disc and it doesn't even give the option screen to boot from the disk -__-
xero1 Wrote:Disable everything in the BIOS that is not needed for booting. Sound, Wi-Fi, NIC, etc.. But it sounds like it is your HDD. Can you put your HDD into an onther PC just to check?
I'll try to disable everything. And idk much about the insides of a computer so prolly not atm
EDIT: Tried that and it didnt work. Same deal.
Vertigo Wrote:Incadude Wrote:you should probably use an ubuntu live disk. To see if it can find your hard drive.
I've tried booting it from a windows xp, windows vista, and a windows 7 disc and it doesn't even give the option screen to boot from the disk -__-
xero1 Wrote:Disable everything in the BIOS that is not needed for booting. Sound, Wi-Fi, NIC, etc.. But it sounds like it is your HDD. Can you put your HDD into an onther PC just to check?
I'll try to disable everything. And idk much about the insides of a computer so prolly not atm
EDIT: Tried that and it didnt work. Same deal.
With Gateway laptop's it is very easy to remove the HDD, most of the time it is just 2 screws. I bet you if you just remove the HDD the system will boot from a live CD. The system is stuck, because it is trying to boot from a HDD that is bad. Did you also disable stuff like SMART?
xero1 Wrote:With Gateway laptop's it is very easy to remove the HDD, most of the time it is just 2 screws. I bet you if you just remove the HDD the system will boot from a live CD. The system is stuck, because it is trying to boot from a HDD that is bad. Did you also disable stuff like SMART?
That's cool to know. I'll try as soon as my dad gets home.
And gateway bios doesn't give you the option to do that (fail).
If anyone else has suggestions please please comment.
And thank you to all who have commented so far.
Vertigo Wrote:xero1 Wrote:With Gateway laptop's it is very easy to remove the HDD, most of the time it is just 2 screws. I bet you if you just remove the HDD the system will boot from a live CD. The system is stuck, because it is trying to boot from a HDD that is bad. Did you also disable stuff like SMART?
That's cool to know. I'll try as soon as my dad gets home.
And gateway bios doesn't give you the option to do that (fail).
If anyone else has suggestions please please comment.
And thank you to all who have commented so far.
If it will boot from the the live CD with no HDD and by some chance you have a 2nd HDD that is the same, try to swap the PCB. The green thing with all the chips on it. Sometimes that is what goes bad and if that is what is bad then after you swap it your system will work just like before.
Just wondering, if i buy a new bigger hard drive, will my laptop run somewhat faster?
And will it somewhat get less hot? (when it was working, it went up to 70F)
hit the laptop above where the hard drive is
might knock it back and spin up
my laptop did that once while it was in windows lol i just gave it a smack and it worked again