Gateway and harddrive

My aunt's four year old Gateway was giving her problems and had stopped
recognizing the printer, the scanner, and the cd-rom drive. However,
everything else seemed to function normally on her Win98SE OS -- all
applications worked, she could cable into the Internet and retrieve mail,
etc.
Although everything seemed to boot and work ok, with the above exceptions, I
found it very curious that the CMOS setup said there was no primary
harddrive, although from Windows I could bring up its properties.
I couldn't find any logical reason for the failures to recognize and
suggested that a new motherboard would go a long way to improving her
machine at far less than the original cost of her pc. I chose a Gigabyte
mobo (GA-7N400L) with an AMD cpu (Athlon XP2500). I stupidly did this
without opening her Gateway and checking everything.
First problem: the rear panel configuration didn't match the Gigabyte and
is welded to the Gateway case. I drilled holes.
Second: Gateway's internal hookups (pwr and front panel wires and
connectors) were too short and didn't match the Gigabyte. I squeezed and
stretched. I finally bought a new case.
Third: the new stuff wouldn't completely boot off her old harddrive;
however, it would allow me to boot into SAFE-MODE. Although the
autoexec-type messages now indicated that there was a cd-rom, I couldn't get
SAFE-MODE to see it. When I tried to boot normally with the mobo install cd
(which lit up and whirred), it would go through a v-e-r-y long process of HD
searching and recognizing all the new mobo components, finally exhausting my
patience (three attempts). I brought in another, already bootable harddrive
from my collection. Everything booted and worked fine, including the
printer, the scanner, and the cd-rom (after reinstallation procedures).
Fourth: of course, Auntie wants her old letters, messages, games, pictures,
etc, which are on her old harddrive. So I set up her old drive as slave to
copy them, but Windows does not see the drive. The BIOS correctly
recognizes the drive, but Explorer just doesn't list it as a drive (the
drive letter that would have been assigned to it is skipped so that the
cd-rom is assigned the next letter from that.
Did Gateway proprietarily format their harddrives? Or am I dealing with an
erratic, failing drive? It booted and worked before I removed it, even
while the old system failed to include it the BIOS info.

Sounds like it might have been attached to a Promise controller card rather
than to the mainboard.
If it was, when it was partitioned and formatted, it may have used a
nonstandard sector translation, which would account for the drive not
showing up in BIOS and not showing up in the new system.

Even if it was on the mainboard controller, often times, you cannot simply
move a drive from one system to another, particularly from an old to a new
system - the translation parameters are different.

Other possibility - the drive exceeded the capacity of the BIOS, and was
partitioned with a disc manager - in which case, you'll need the same
version to load and read the drive again.



"Jark" wrote in message
news:FK4Zb.13455$Xp.74383@attbi_s54...
My aunt's four year old Gateway was giving her problems and had stopped
recognizing the printer, the scanner, and the cd-rom drive. However,
everything else seemed to function normally on her Win98SE OS -- all
applications worked, she could cable into the Internet and retrieve mail,
etc.
Although everything seemed to boot and work ok, with the above exceptions,
I
found it very curious that the CMOS setup said there was no primary
harddrive, although from Windows I could bring up its properties.
I couldn't find any logical reason for the failures to recognize and
suggested that a new motherboard would go a long way to improving her
machine at far less than the original cost of her pc. I chose a Gigabyte
mobo (GA-7N400L) with an AMD cpu (Athlon XP2500). I stupidly did this
without opening her Gateway and checking everything.
First problem: the rear panel configuration didn't match the Gigabyte and
is welded to the Gateway case. I drilled holes.
Second: Gateway's internal hookups (pwr and front panel wires and
connectors) were too short and didn't match the Gigabyte. I squeezed and
stretched. I finally bought a new case.
Third: the new stuff wouldn't completely boot off her old harddrive;
however, it would allow me to boot into SAFE-MODE. Although the
autoexec-type messages now indicated that there was a cd-rom, I couldn't
get
SAFE-MODE to see it. When I tried to boot normally with the mobo install
cd
(which lit up and whirred), it would go through a v-e-r-y long process of
HD
searching and recognizing all the new mobo components, finally exhausting
my
patience (three attempts). I brought in another, already bootable
harddrive
from my collection. Everything booted and worked fine, including the
printer, the scanner, and the cd-rom (after reinstallation procedures).
Fourth: of course, Auntie wants her old letters, messages, games,
pictures,
etc, which are on her old harddrive. So I set up her old drive as slave
to
copy them, but Windows does not see the drive. The BIOS correctly
recognizes the drive, but Explorer just doesn't list it as a drive (the
drive letter that would have been assigned to it is skipped so that the
cd-rom is assigned the next letter from that.
Did Gateway proprietarily format their harddrives? Or am I dealing with an
erratic, failing drive? It booted and worked before I removed it, even
while the old system failed to include it the BIOS info.

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 15:37:09 GMT, "Jark"
wrote:

Did Gateway proprietarily format their harddrives? Or am I dealing with an
erratic, failing drive? It booted and worked before I removed it, even
while the old system failed to include it the BIOS info.

No.. the main problem is... you can't usually just transplant in a new
(totally different) motherboard and CPU and throw in an existing
installation of Windows and expect it to work reliably. Windows
builds itself up when it's installed according to the hardware it
detects at the time.

Best solution would probably be to delete all partitions on your drive
that you provided... recreate them, do a clean install of Windows on
that drive - with her original drive in as slave. Make sure you
insall the motherboard chipset driver (particularly important with the
AMD). YOu should then be able to see both drives in the system and be
able to back up her important documents.


Albert Alcoceba


http://aussietrains.fotopic.net/
Remove REMOVE

I forgot that part: instead of connecting to the onboard IDE1 and 2
connectors, the drive (20gB) was connected to this Promise Ultra66 card. I
thought that was becoming "old technology" when this system was built four
years ago.
So, if I reinstall this Promise card on the new mobo and connect another
drive to the onboard system will I be able to see both drives and work with
both of them?



"Edward J. Neth" wrote in message
. com...
Sounds like it might have been attached to a Promise controller card
rather
than to the mainboard.
If it was, when it was partitioned and formatted, it may have used a
nonstandard sector translation, which would account for the drive not
showing up in BIOS and not showing up in the new system.

Even if it was on the mainboard controller, often times, you cannot simply
move a drive from one system to another, particularly from an old to a new
system - the translation parameters are different.

Other possibility - the drive exceeded the capacity of the BIOS, and was
partitioned with a disc manager - in which case, you'll need the same
version to load and read the drive again.



"Jark" wrote in message
news:FK4Zb.13455$Xp.74383@attbi_s54...
My aunt's four year old Gateway was giving her problems and had stopped
recognizing the printer, the scanner, and the cd-rom drive. However,
everything else seemed to function normally on her Win98SE OS -- all
applications worked, she could cable into the Internet and retrieve
mail,
etc.
Although everything seemed to boot and work ok, with the above
exceptions,
I
found it very curious that the CMOS setup said there was no primary
harddrive, although from Windows I could bring up its properties.
I couldn't find any logical reason for the failures to recognize and
suggested that a new motherboard would go a long way to improving her
machine at far less than the original cost of her pc. I chose a
Gigabyte
mobo (GA-7N400L) with an AMD cpu (Athlon XP2500). I stupidly did this
without opening her Gateway and checking everything.
First problem: the rear panel configuration didn't match the Gigabyte
and
is welded to the Gateway case. I drilled holes.
Second: Gateway's internal hookups (pwr and front panel wires and
connectors) were too short and didn't match the Gigabyte. I squeezed
and
stretched. I finally bought a new case.
Third: the new stuff wouldn't completely boot off her old harddrive;
however, it would allow me to boot into SAFE-MODE. Although the
autoexec-type messages now indicated that there was a cd-rom, I couldn't
get
SAFE-MODE to see it. When I tried to boot normally with the mobo
install
cd
(which lit up and whirred), it would go through a v-e-r-y long process
of
HD
searching and recognizing all the new mobo components, finally
exhausting
my
patience (three attempts). I brought in another, already bootable
harddrive
from my collection. Everything booted and worked fine, including the
printer, the scanner, and the cd-rom (after reinstallation procedures).
Fourth: of course, Auntie wants her old letters, messages, games,
pictures,
etc, which are on her old harddrive. So I set up her old drive as slave
to
copy them, but Windows does not see the drive. The BIOS correctly
recognizes the drive, but Explorer just doesn't list it as a drive (the
drive letter that would have been assigned to it is skipped so that the
cd-rom is assigned the next letter from that.
Did Gateway proprietarily format their harddrives? Or am I dealing with
an
erratic, failing drive? It booted and worked before I removed it, even
while the old system failed to include it the BIOS info.