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    Gateway W340ui Operating System Not Found

    Discussion in 'Gateway and eMachines' started by billa48, Feb 6, 2013.

  1. billa48

    billa48 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Gateway W340ui

    Ok now, this laptop does not recognize the hard drive or the cd rom in the bios settings. Before you go on with it's a bad hard drive or cd rom, i have several ide hard drives and cd roms layin around here, they all work in other systems without a single fail.

    This laptop kind of seems to forget the bios settings i think. Other than the boot order, everything else like primary master and slave settings, regardless of what you set it on, goes back to NONE.

    I have tried changing ram, hard drives, cd roms, processor, I still get the No operating system found message. I have turned off the PXE. No effect what so ever. Does not recognize hard drive or cd drive. Doesnt recognize a harddrive inside a CD rom caddie (second hard drive) which works perfectly in other computers.

    Further, it does recognize a USB stick as a bootable device, but does not boot from it at all.

    Basically, ALL booting options are fail. Is there a way to update/reflash the bios using a USB stick in this thing?

    It appears to me that there is something either bios or hardware failure in this laptop, like a motherboard controller chip or something has stopped working or gotten overheated.

    Also, it freezes in bios settings, what kind of garbage, freezes in bios! with no harddrive or cd rom or modem or wireless card attached.

    Any suggestions?
     
    billa48, Feb 6, 2013
    #1
  2. TANWare

    TANWare Just This Side of Senile, I think. Super Moderator

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    The HDD should be sata not ide. This could be the first issue. so long as with the HDD in there is not a huge delay nin getting too "no op sys found" then the hdd may have gone. This especially if the bios does not recognize it. If the bios holds no settings then it may be you need a new cmos battery. Kind of hard to diagnose without being there......................
     
    TANWare, Feb 6, 2013
    #2
  3. billa48

    billa48 Notebook Enthusiast

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    OMG, you gotta be kidding, so i've been plugging in all 10 of these IDE hard drives in a SATA connector like a fool all along! OMG! What a blithering idiot.

    Thanks man, thank you very much for the reply, but i guess you shouldnt have bothered.

    Lesson Learned, All IDE activity is gone. Seems it hapens on quite a few of Acer/Emachines/Gateway laptops of that era.

    Installed Ubuntu 12.04 on a SD card, running this laptop that way from now on. Ubuntu boots and works perfectly. Only swapped out the RealTek Wireless lan card with an Intel one which is much better and Ubuntu picks it up quick.
     
    billa48, Feb 8, 2013
    #3