Caveat emptor!

In January of this year, I purchased a Gateway laptop for my son. The installed OS was Windows 7. Recently, WIndows 7 began failing to boot, complaining that it had trouble communicating with an installed device, status 0xc00000e9. The recovery disk generated on first receiving the system fails to start, hanging at the "Please wait a moment" screen. Gateway Support sent me a link that set out a procedure for reinstalling the OS from the hard drive partition. THis procedure ALSO failed with the message -- status 0xc00000e9 -- reported above.

Best Buy's position is as follows: we should've purchased the extra service plan, or the cost will be $85, either to diagnose (let alone fix) the problem themselves or to return it to Gateway FOR WARRANTY SERVICE! This renders the manufacturer's warranty useless without paying an $85 entrance fee. Gateway, by the way, confimed that the unit is still under warranty. They have NO regional service centers, so the only option is to pay shipping to their center in Texas.

Does anyone else find something wrong with this picture? Apparently
1) BestBuy will not stand behind a product they sell, even during the manufacturer's warranty period; instead, you have to place your bet that the product will not fail or pay a premium service charge.
2) The Gateway warranty is NOT to be taken seriously unless you agree to pay shipping to their single service center in the US.

Advice:
1. Assume that Gateway warranty service costs one or more shipping fees, and decide on your system with that in mind.
2. Understand the Best Buy offer of an extended service plan to be a hint that they will provide NO support for repairs under the manufacturer's warranty, and decide on your service strategy, computer make and where you buy the computer with these facts in mind.

In short, let the buyer beware!

 

If no one here can solve your problem I recommend shipping it to Gateway. It will be cheaper and there is a much higher chance that they will fix it. This is assuming your son can go without it for 2 weeks.

You could always install Vista. It will probably take a while for Microsoft and the manufacturers to work out the bugs with 7. Personally I still use Vista despite the fact that I have Gateway's Windows 7 install disks because of things like that and also the possible lack of programs that support it.

 

Sounds like possibly a hard drive issue. I would also recommend shipping it to Gateway for the best service of the product versus using Best Buy. As far as you having to pay shipping, I know it doesn't feel 'fair'... but you did get a better product at a lower price because of this policy.

 

The computer cannot communicate with the HDD. The problem could be the HDD is not plugged in properly. If this the case, i woulld try to reinsert the HDD. It could be the HDD board is messed up. If this is the case, you need a new HDD. It could be that the connector on the mainboard is messed up. In this case you need a new mainboard a.k.a. a new laptop.

 

The original poster's problem has nothing to do with Windows 7. It is obviously a hardware issue. Anyone who would recommend Vista over Windows 7 has obviously not had any experience with Windows 7; it is BY FAR the best operating system Microsoft has released in nearly a decade! I use it every day on my P-7805u FX laptop and have no problems with it at all. In fact, I just reinstalled it this past weekend because I bought and installed a new Hitachi 500GB 7200rpm HDD (I now have two 500GB 7200rpm HDD's in my laptop; the other being a Seagate) and the only piece of hardware that didn't work right off the bat was the card reader - EVERY other item was functioning already! However, Windows 7 directed me right to the correct driver from Gateway's website for that card reader running on a Windows 7 64-bit system! The only other driver I felt that I HAD to install was the latest driver from Nvidia for my GeForce 9800M GTS graphics card.

Vista was a decent operating system, especially by the time Windows 7 came out, but I feel Windows 7 is FAR better!

Dennis

 

Here's one thing you can try. Download HDD Regenerator, or if you know your hard drive's manufacturer you could download whatever hard drive tool they provide. For instance, if you have a Seagate drive you could use Seatools.
Whichever one you use is fine, the ultimate goal is to find and restore bad sectors on your hard drive. It may not be the ultimate fix as it does sound a bit worse, but you have to try it because its free and you should at least eliminate it as the culprit before paying to ship your laptop. I hope this leads to a fixed hard drive, best of luck.