62 replies to this topic

[whatsanike]

OMG left the Gateway desktop computer on all nite for scheduled Webroot Av full scan, having finally got windows to reinstall after the hours of hacking it described above. This morning the screen was blank, could not revive, forced shutdown, Vista is now back at square one with dirty lying nls file missing corrupt message. Put in gateway rescue CD and got page fault error and now the rescue CD won't even boot... just a green slider. Possible theory the Webroot AAV might have damaged the .nls files in C:\Windows\System32

[whatsanike]

Oh yeah, and forgot to mention the blue screen with the Page Fault Error when I booted with the CD and now it won't boot at all but shows green slider for indefinite, i.e., infinite time that seems like a maternity.

[whatsanike]

And one last thing before I jump off the bridge. in 1995 I got a 286 computer. It ran MS DOS. I used a DOS finance program to document my income form street music and repairing accordions. This documentation I used to prove my income to buy a Condo in DC for $30,000 $12,000 Bank loan and $18,000 U.S. Government backed loan.
Then MS Windows came out. I had Winows 1.1 for the Zenith computer, but never could get it to do much. It could split the screen in four windows, which was its claim to fame that worked; none of its other features ever worked for me. Then the financial software time out and was replaced with a Windows version about the time of Windows 3, the Dos version quit working by year 2000 due to 2 digit dates. Ever since then I have not been able to get Windows accounting software to work right although I leveraged my original Real Estate investment into the Single Family Home I now live in. So thank you Microsoft for helping me with DOS. When you gonna have an OS that works that good?

[whatsanike]

So now the plan is, to reformat the C: Partition and transfer windows.old from the SimpleSave Terabyte backup drive and see if it is detected after renaming it Windows, so that the gateway repair disk will reinstall Windows, which of course it will only do if it detects the old installation. In case the hard drive is going bad, i will attempt to purchase a new one. Plan B is to run the free trial of Windows 7 for 3 months and see what turns up as a solution mean while.
Went to Best Buy to get the new HD Monday morning and the boy unlocked the cage (not mine, the HD cage) and gave me a box and went about his business, and then I noticed that it was a laptop HD. SO left it sitting there, and went back in that afternoon, discovering that they were out of SATA cables anyway. So now I will try to buy the HD and cable online mail order. Every one is against me, with the exception of a few kind souls, and sometimes wonder about them also.

[ceehoppy]

Is the gateway disc a REPAIR disc or a RESTORE/recovery disc? Most pc's that I've had came with a restore disc that you could reinstall the os on a blank hdd (factory fresh).
Some of your symptom sound like hdd problem or corrupted os files. But some remind me of when I had a failing DDRAM memory stick. It might not hurt to google Memtest+ , download & burn the iso to test your pc RAM before buying a new hdd.

[whatsanike]

I did buy a new HD, so the cutie at Best Buy finally found the SATA cables so I could buy a 500 gig drive. Now the plan is to try to use the restore disk to install Vista on this one. The restore disk will not work unless it detects a previous Windows install. So I have two choices it seems. 1) reformat the old HD and copy the C:\windows file from the USB drive in case the restore disk won't mount it. First try to reinstall Vista on the old HD just for laughs. If that fails to be recognized, put the new HD in the computer, Format the partition NTFS, and copy the Windows folder to that.
2)If the recovery disk doesn't recognize the Windows folder as an OS install, then put the HD from the good gateway vista desktop and run both the new and the other machine's HD and do the reinstall on the new 500 GB drive.
In any case the Vista install needs to end up on the new HD eventually.
Open to suggestions.

[sambul61]

You may need a bigger drive to install fresh Vista and other staff. It sounds like 2Tb drive will do a better job in a long run, keeping in mind, you may need to copy Vista Restore CD to it after copying your c:\windows file, and then use both to repair your old accordion that you broke when living way back in that small Condo - at least that's what I would do. Once you copy that CD onto it, the drive gets really heavy, but a bit softer than a hammer - just the right tool for the job.

The best way to get the 2Tb drive is from Walmart - they sell EMachines really cheap, so you take out the new drive from it, put the old one in (just make sure Vista is working again) and bring it back to Walmart (as a donation) - they don't have a clue anyway, and may even give you a free Gift Card. Good luck, and keep us posted.

[whatsanike]

Thanks for the suggestion. I am too proud to steal from Walmart. The last time I went in a Walmart was in a depressed outlying area where the people all looked dour because of few jobs. I needed some mouse-Pruf so after 20 minutes not finding a clued in sales person I found some mouse poison and got in line behind a lady buying 100 pounds of cat food. It turned out the clerk couldn't get the machine to take her coupons and wandered off to see some person with more authority. So I gave up and left. It seems ironic that Walmart would not hire enough people since they would just come back and spend money there. The nearest Walmart is about 15 miles from here. Anyway if 500 gig isn't enough for Vista reinstall I will give up and run the Win 7 90 day trial until I figure out a solution, if that OS trial even works. It should, as it seems to have no problems yet on my laptop.

[whatsanike]

Formatted the old problem HD to NTFS using the Gateway restore disk. However now Gateway of course, reports that it can't find any drivers to do the fresh install. So fortunately I bought another Gateway computer at the same time I bought this one, and it is running Vista. Myh boy uses it for online gaming and kid stuff. It is the only Vista machine out of the 4 I know of, that has no problems with Windows updates and no issues. So I am now cloning his HD using Clonezilla on PartedMagic, and will try to use the Gateway restore disk or downloaded Vista restore disk (better, as it might ask me for the Vista product key) to clean-install Windows on my old reformatted HD now cloned and will be put back in the old machine. Is MS guilty of antitrust violations for letting the computer makers pre-install the OS and then jacking us up to buy the next OS, when the reinstall won't work after Windows update crashed the unstable Vista OS? I found that I could not even run the EMachine Windows 7 HD from a new computer I nbought along with its Windows 7 license, due to driver incompatibility resulting from collusion between MS and Emachine.

[sambul61]

You may want to consider starting Class Action Suite with MS on behalf of EMachines and Walmart. You don't have to be an engineer for that, in fact some colleges offer 1.5 year Paralegal Degree that would be good to get you started. We may join later, when there is more action coming in. Btw, if you slipstream Clonezilla Driver into the Gateway Vista Restore CD with Parted Magic, it may start working better for your task. Another option is to consider buying a new EMachine with 200Gb SSD (Solid State Drive): they're a lot faster, and usually work better to restore Vista. Not sure though, if Walmart gives free Gift Cards for returning these back.

[whatsanike]

What the Gateway restore CD was looking for, which I could not provide on my reformatted HD seems to be Windows drivers to indicate I am installing over the Gateway Windows Vista old install. So to clarify my theory of action: Thinking that if I clone the HD from the other Gateway machine, and put that cloned drive back in the sick gateway machine, I could reinstall Windows on that, since it will even have the restore partition for Windows cab files on it, and real gateway drivers. What I was a little concerned about was how make sure Microsoft Windows Update does not detect it as the other license. I need to be able to put in the Product Key at some point. Also I do not want to be running my teenage son's apps, nor to be able to read his files. I want a clean install using the previous license that was on the machine for Windows Vista.

[sambul61]

The more I think about it, the more doubts I have in your course of action. It looks like the only way to reactivate Vista on your sick Gateway is the Class Action Suite. Just put your Emachine aside for a moment and think about it... It gives the greatest bang for the buck. Unless of course you're willing to try Win7 instead... If you have any old apps don't worry, you can register them again in Win 7, and most will work normally.

[whatsanike]

The reformat from Dos and clean install seems to have worked. Also I made sure to install the product key from the back of the machine, in case the Windows updates might cause a problem if the product key in the software were left blank. It seems unable to download the .net framework service pack 2 and when it reaches that one on the list it stops all the updates.