If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully
Hi 7 year old Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully. Get only a mouse cursor on the monitor. Monitor is known good. No beep during POST. Harddrive was removed and booted another PC properly. Hard drive is believed good. Peripherals light up on power up. WinXP Home Edition. Power supply is external on this model and is known good. The CPU fan runs all the time but the CPU doesn't seem as warm as it should be. I have tried re-seating all the boards and the RAM. If I power up the PC and let it sit for awhile, the Windows XP home logo appears on the monitor as if the screen saver is starting. There is a little green light on inside, normal I believe. Any ideas as to whats going on? Thanks,Fred |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully
In ,
fcjones typed on Sat, 26 Dec 2009 12:57:13 -0600: Hi 7 year old Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully. Get only a mouse cursor on the monitor. Monitor is known good. No beep during POST. Harddrive was removed and booted another PC properly. Hard drive is believed good. Peripherals light up on power up. WinXP Home Edition. Power supply is external on this model and is known good. The CPU fan runs all the time but the CPU doesn't seem as warm as it should be. I have tried re-seating all the boards and the RAM. If I power up the PC and let it sit for awhile, the Windows XP home logo appears on the monitor as if the screen saver is starting. There is a little green light on inside, normal I believe. Any ideas as to whats going on? Thanks,Fred Fred, what was this other machine that booted this Windows XP? Unless they are virtually identical, that wouldn't work too well. If you installed Windows XP on that other machine and now trying to boot it off of this machine... well that is your problem. -- Bill Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) 1 of 3 - Windows XP SP2 |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully
BillW50 wrote:
In , fcjones typed on Sat, 26 Dec 2009 12:57:13 -0600: Hi 7 year old Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully. Get only a mouse cursor on the monitor. Monitor is known good. No beep during POST. Harddrive was removed and booted another PC properly. Hard drive is believed good. Peripherals light up on power up. WinXP Home Edition. Power supply is external on this model and is known good. The CPU fan runs all the time but the CPU doesn't seem as warm as it should be. I have tried re-seating all the boards and the RAM. If I power up the PC and let it sit for awhile, the Windows XP home logo appears on the monitor as if the screen saver is starting. There is a little green light on inside, normal I believe. Any ideas as to whats going on? Thanks,Fred Fred, what was this other machine that booted this Windows XP? Unless they are virtually identical, that wouldn't work too well. If you installed Windows XP on that other machine and now trying to boot it off of this machine... well that is your problem. To be more precise, Microsoft does not want you and me to go around switching hard drives from one computer to another, so they've built in some safeguards to keep this from happening very much. The bottom line is that if the motherboard chipsets are absolutely identical between two systems, a hard drive that boots up on one is 99% probable to boot up on the other. For Intel chipset motherboards, at least, there is a little bit of tolerance for chipsets that are almost identical. Anything else, and a drive that boots up on one computer will give a BSOD on the other most of the time. The rest of the time, the system will simply hang, as has apparently happened with the Profile 4. In short, Microsoft has inserted some chipset specific instructions early on into the system bootstrap process, unlike most versions of Linux that do not care what motherboard and other chips are in the system. Linux adjusts itself to the system chips while booting up. The only other thing I can suggest is to boot up the Profile 4 into the system CMOS setup, make sure that the hard drive and its true capacity are recognized, and make sure that none of the other BIOS settings are out of whack... Ben Myers |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully
Thank you Gentlemen, Well, my boss let me attach the HDD in question to a approx. 10 year old Dell desktop, as a secondary harddrive. The HD appeared to be completely accessible, I could see my folders/files. Our 2nd test was to boot from my HDD, not the Dell's (Dell HDD taken off the bus). The result was I could see my login icons and I logged in. It gave a message something like "this copy of windows needs to be activated, would like to activate..." and I clicked "No" then shut the Dell down and removed my HDD from it. Ben Myers, I have tried to access the CMOS settings with F1, but no luck. Of course I have also tried F8 to get to Safe mode, no luck. I just get no display, can't see what is going on...NO POST BEEP EVER. Zero beeps. I THINK it used to give one beep. Could it be the CMOS battery? It has never been replaced. It is a 2032, does it need to be rechargeable type or just regular? Thank you very much. Fred |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully
fcjones wrote:
Thank you Gentlemen, Well, my boss let me attach the HDD in question to a approx. 10 year old Dell desktop, as a secondary harddrive. The HD appeared to be completely accessible, I could see my folders/files. Our 2nd test was to boot from my HDD, not the Dell's (Dell HDD taken off the bus). The result was I could see my login icons and I logged in. It gave a message something like "this copy of windows needs to be activated, would like to activate..." and I clicked "No" then shut the Dell down and removed my HDD from it. Ben Myers, I have tried to access the CMOS settings with F1, but no luck. Of course I have also tried F8 to get to Safe mode, no luck. I just get no display, can't see what is going on...NO POST BEEP EVER. Zero beeps. I THINK it used to give one beep. Could it be the CMOS battery? It has never been replaced. It is a 2032, does it need to be rechargeable type or just regular? Thank you very much. Fred The Dell apparently has the same motherboard chipset as the Profile 4, so Windows did not complain with a BSOD. (I did something similar recently, taking a hard drive from a dead Gateway laptop and putting into a Dell Latitude 100L, which I know had the same chipset as the Gateway.) With CMOS batteries being fairly inexpensive, replacing the one in the Profile 4 might be worth a try. Replacing it also wipes out the CMOS settings, which could be corrupted and the cause of the problem. If you see nothing at all on the screen when you power it up, then F1 for setup and F8 for safe mode won't do any good... Ben Myers |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully
"fcjones" wrote in message ... Thank you Gentlemen, Well, my boss let me attach the HDD in question to a approx. 10 year old Dell desktop, as a secondary harddrive. The HD appeared to be completely accessible, I could see my folders/files. Our 2nd test was to boot from my HDD, not the Dell's (Dell HDD taken off the bus). The result was I could see my login icons and I logged in. It gave a message something like "this copy of windows needs to be activated, would like to activate..." and I clicked "No" then shut the Dell down and removed my HDD from it. Ben Myers, I have tried to access the CMOS settings with F1, but no luck. Of course I have also tried F8 to get to Safe mode, no luck. I just get no display, can't see what is going on...NO POST BEEP EVER. Zero beeps. I THINK it used to give one beep. Could it be the CMOS battery? It has never been replaced. It is a 2032, does it need to be rechargeable type or just regular? Thank you very much. Fred Do you maybe have another power supply? I know you said this one is good, but. . . no video, no beep, no keyboard. Sounds like it could be a bad PS. -- SC Tom |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully
I actually get only a mouse cursor on the monitor which moves with the mouse as it should. I have 2 power supplies, both give the same results. Out of desperation, I tried booting with my emergency start up diskette. I hear the floppy spin up and I get completely dark monitor. I then hit the enter key and the floppy clicks and spins up. Then I ejected the floppy and turned off the computer by hitting the start button. Another experiment: I removed one of the 2 RAM modules and started the PC. I then got 2 beeps. Thanks,Fred |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully
"fcjones" wrote in message ... I actually get only a mouse cursor on the monitor which moves with the mouse as it should. I have 2 power supplies, both give the same results. Out of desperation, I tried booting with my emergency start up diskette. I hear the floppy spin up and I get completely dark monitor. I then hit the enter key and the floppy clicks and spins up. Then I ejected the floppy and turned off the computer by hitting the start button. Another experiment: I removed one of the 2 RAM modules and started the PC. I then got 2 beeps. Thanks,Fred Have you swapped the RAM with the other one? 2 beeps on an AMI BIOS is a parity error, which would be a memory problem (I don't know who made your BIOS). Have you taken everything out that's not needed to boot, like a NIC, a modem, etc.? Also disconnect any external drives and printers and see what happens. -- SC Tom |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully
Thank you Sir. This is a big dump of experiments I did on New Years Eve... Removed individual RAM modules--2 Beeps on boot. Swapped RAM modules--2 Beeps on boot. Remove both RAM modules--2 Beeps on boot. All devices in place, remove CD-ROM player--0 Beeps on boot. ",remove floppy drive--0 Beeps on boot. Replace CMOS battery--0 Beeps on boot, no change, same state (display backlight, live mouse cursor only). F1 on boot--Black screen (no backlight, no mouse cursor). F8 on boot--Black screen (no backlight, no mouse cursor). Insert Emergency Startup Diskette, boot--black screen (no backlight, no mouse cursor). All in place (zero state), boot--live display (backlight, live mouse cursor only). In this nominal state, perform "tab,tab, and enter"--Windows WELCOME SOUND PLAYS, PROPER WALLPAPER APPEARS!!!-- No Windows shortcuts visible. No Windows taskbar visible. Right-click desktop, get Menu, select properties--no response. Right-click desktop, get Menu, able to create shortcuts on desktop, right click on shortcuts, 'save as', and see folders. No programs run (such as Word, Paint, Desktop Properties) EXCEPT NOTEPAD!!! I was able to create, edit and save a text file with notepad. I then can shut down the machine as I used to by doing "windows logo key", 'u', and 'u' Through these experiments I have drawn some conclusions. I need to see what others say first. Thanks for you help with my (expensive) old Betsy. Fred |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
Gateway Profile 4 won't boot up fully
"fcjones" wrote in message ... Thank you Sir. This is a big dump of experiments I did on New Years Eve... Removed individual RAM modules--2 Beeps on boot. Swapped RAM modules--2 Beeps on boot. Remove both RAM modules--2 Beeps on boot. All devices in place, remove CD-ROM player--0 Beeps on boot. ",remove floppy drive--0 Beeps on boot. Replace CMOS battery--0 Beeps on boot, no change, same state (display backlight, live mouse cursor only). F1 on boot--Black screen (no backlight, no mouse cursor). F8 on boot--Black screen (no backlight, no mouse cursor). Insert Emergency Startup Diskette, boot--black screen (no backlight, no mouse cursor). All in place (zero state), boot--live display (backlight, live mouse cursor only). In this nominal state, perform "tab,tab, and enter"--Windows WELCOME SOUND PLAYS, PROPER WALLPAPER APPEARS!!!-- No Windows shortcuts visible. No Windows taskbar visible. Right-click desktop, get Menu, select properties--no response. Right-click desktop, get Menu, able to create shortcuts on desktop, right click on shortcuts, 'save as', and see folders. No programs run (such as Word, Paint, Desktop Properties) EXCEPT NOTEPAD!!! I was able to create, edit and save a text file with notepad. I then can shut down the machine as I used to by doing "windows logo key", 'u', and 'u' Through these experiments I have drawn some conclusions. I need to see what others say first. Thanks for you help with my (expensive) old Betsy. Fred Do you have another video card you could put in? I had a similar problem with an old Digital workstation- it wouldn't display anything until the login screen came up. It seemed that all the lower displays wouldn't work, like 640x480, so I could get into BIOS and adjust my settings. That's not all that's going on with yours, I don't think, but it could be a start. If you hit the key you need to hit to get into BIOS and let it sit for a while, does the BIOS screen or anything ever come up? If you unplug the keyboard and boot it, do you get a keyboard error message, or a different number of beeps? -- SC Tom |
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Gateway PROFILE III CX | JR the Postman | Gateway Computers | 2 | September 27th 08 08:57 AM |
Gateway Profile 4 Monitor | jameskris | Gateway Computers | 2 | March 12th 06 07:34 PM |
Gateway Profile 3500537 | patio | Gateway Computers | 0 | March 28th 05 06:13 AM |
Harddrive for Gateway Profile | Terry | Gateway Computers | 4 | November 25th 03 01:25 AM |
Gateway Profile 4X opinions | Observer3 | Gateway Computers | 3 | July 25th 03 11:27 PM |