Help with a facotry reinstall

i recently created a recovery disk using the gateway recovery center, then i reinstalled vista from the cd gateway supplied with the 6860fx.

it seems i no longer have gateway recovery center, and its not on my recovery disk i made!

im not satisfied with some installations i did, and what i want is to go back to the original factory settings, with the gateway recovery center, bloatware, etc. as if i never did the reinstall.

the gateway manual says to press F8 during os load up and it will bring you to a recovery screen.. it does not, it brings me to a safe mode boot screen. ive read that the gateway recovery center will allow me to do this factory reinstall, is this correct? what do i do?

 

Did you save the file Windows.old (An option during fresh install) if so its there.

 

damn, no i didnt

 

did you delete the recovery partition when you did the clean install?

 

i never selected that option. ive read the gateway recovery app lies in that recovery partition. but to get into it....

 

can i do a factory reinstall from the partition some how?

 

yes you might try going into that partition, maybe you can run it from there.

 

any idea how? is the recovery center availble for download?

 

Try hitting F11 RIGHT after the Gateway splash screen.

 

tried a bunch of times, no luck. manual says f8 for recovery screen..brings me to safe mode options..bah

 

did you try going into the partition?

 

i dont know how.

ive been doing some searching, dosent look easy. do you know how?

 

i just tried fooling around with permissions to get into d, no luck but i did see the OS setting permissions to a bunch of files, including drivers files. it must be in there somewhere.

 

hummm, dont have me crashing my laptop to recreate this problem...lol

but im going to test a few things out in a sec...

1: you can do a search for the recovery center option to see if it can be found.
2: you can boot from another media and then run disk partition software to made your recovery partition the main boot partition. this should start the new recovery proccess and you can go back and redo your hard drive back to factory.

3: try booting the cd and do the recovery from there, i think this will bring up the original recovery options....scratch that last part...i just tried it and didn't see it listed. but you can try system restore from the list of choices there.

give me a bit more and i'll try to find you a solution.

 

here is how to access the recovery partition to search for files...i do not recommend this, but your more than welcome to try it.

1: right click on recovery and click properties
2: click security make sure you have rights to the drive.
3: click on tools/folder options/view/ take the check out of boxes hide ext & hide protected. put a dot in show all files and then click ok

gateway recovery center installer is located under e:\i386\apps\app002155.exe

you can just do a search of the e partition to find it.

hope this helps.

 

1. been searching for close to 2 hours now no luck, and i dont think ill find it. gateways website says that app is constantly under revision, so it seems the version i need is on my comp, or someone elses 6860.

2. sounds extreme, ill leave this for worst case scenario

3. is this system restore a factory restore or just a vista reinstall?


thanks a million... ill wait around to see what you come up with.

 

nah, it's there i have a p-6860 and im looking at the file right now. i just clicked on the install file and it was about to install.

when you click on the recovery partition, vista has a new special search feature. so at the top right of the screen, while under the recovery partition...just type in recovery and it will come up automatically.

 

your drive may be a different letter than mine...mine just happens to be e drive

 

***Seems i missed an entire post from you lol. How do i get that folder extracted?


update: i just tried using the repair feature during the os reinstall.. nothing. looks like i have to use the recovery center.

 

having a tough time getting the permissions correctly set up... ill let you know what happens...thanks

 

dang, the forums we're down.

just do this

here is how to access the recovery partition to search for files...i do not recommend this, but your more than welcome to try it.

1: right click on recovery and click properties
2: click security make sure you have rights to the drive.
3: click on tools/folder options/view/ take the check out of boxes hide ext & hide protected. put a dot in show all files and then click ok

and your recovery partition will show when you click into

 

i follow you on this.

its where i get to settings permissions is where i dont know what to do. when i right click on the d drive and click the tab for security i see four users: CREATOR OWNER / SYSTEM / ME-ADMINISTRATOR / USERS. All have full control checked, except CREATOR OWNER. i cant seem to enable this for this 'user'. regardless, ive tried to view the contents of d and i still get the autorun and inof files. Im logged in as administrator, have 'full control' and i cant view the folder contents.

Would it be possible for you to step me through this? Thanks

 

3: click on tools/folder options/view/ take the check out of boxes hide ext & hide protected. put a dot in show all files and then click ok


did you do this?

 

got it, didnt set the right user up with permissions. thank a lot, youve been a ton of help. And thanks to anyone who helped me.

 

so you got it to work???

 

nope. i installed the recovery center, loaded it up and selected factory reinstall. it then rebooted my comp, expecting to boot into the program, instead it just boots me back into windows. nothing happens. grrr.

how is one supposed to do a factory reinstall? crazy... any ideas johnksss?

 

yes, i had that problem with my dv9740us

ok, lets try a few other things...what is the drive listing in your computer. starting with drive C thru E and did you add a second hardrive?

 

C and D (partition recovery). No second HDD

 

irata

have you thought about a clean install if you have a vista disk or your recovery disk? It's might be the easiest and quickest at this point. You should have a drivers cd, or you can download them easily enough.......

 

if you can set your d (recovery partition) drive as the active partition, then you can boot the gateway recovery and run recovery manager.

 

by this method, it dosent seem you can do a factory reinstall. when gateway recovery center asks you to make a recovery cd, it dosetn include all drivers and software (hot keys, wallpapers, gateway recovery center itself)


i chatted with tech support this morning, the guy was nice but he kept directing me to do a OS reinstall via the disk. he posted incstructions here:

http://support.gateway.com/s/software/MICROSOF/vista/7515945/7515945su6.shtml

i noted step 25 where it says to insert the drivers and applications cd to recover such files...back to square one. this is not a factory reinstall. his next solution was to send my comp out to them so they can do a OEM reset.... why cant i do it?? its my reason for requesting tech support in the first place. all the recovery files reside in the partition. i noted the flawed recovery system to him.


johnksss: Any particular method to make my HDD boot off d: first?


this isnt life or death here, but i do want to resolve this so we 6080/6831 owners can learn how to prevent this problem and fix it if it does arise.

 

When you make a driver/app recovery cd or dvd it has all the apps and drivers that came with your computer, minus the gateway backgroud which you can download for this site off the top thread. Make it simple, make a driver/app recovery cd or dvd, check it to make sure it works, then do a clean install with you gateway systems disk, after you do the clean install and before vista wants to update, put your driver/app recovery cd or dvd in and load all your drivers, and whatever apps you want. Trust me I have three of this, I have done this about 6 times now because of upgrades and such.

 

i agree with you. But this recovery process is flawed, the recovery disk gateway makes dosent include all drivers and files as i said. when one makes a recovery cd, one expects all the factory settings to be on there, my HP did. If i would have known in the first place gateway wasnt going to include ALL drivers and software on the recovery cd....

 

I would like to know what is missing? Like I said I have done fresh installs so much lately I have had no problem getting any driver I need, you can even get your drivers from gateway.com, Microsoft update ect. You can also save your current gateway backgrounds before doing it. So really what is the difference, you can even load all the bloatware at came with in back on it. I just did it with a Gateway m-6846 that I bought for my daughter, using the same process, it was almost quicker then trying to remove all of the bloatware.

 

what i would like is for the gateway recovery center to be installed and WORKING (see a few posts up). i got the walls off this site already. I also noticed the hot keys message pops are gone, i dont know if this one is drivers or software.

 

Open the disc manually and double click on grc.exe I believe. That is the recovery program. However if you are downgrading to 32bit don't expect all the drivers that you need to be there. Also I did that and allot of the drives appeared to instal while running recovery center, but after rebooting I discovered they had not. Your best bet is to go to the Gateway support and pull up all the downloads with your model or serial no.
Seanno

 

You will not find any drivers for the P-6080fx on the gateway site yet, just use your drivers off the recovery disk that you made, install everyone of them right down the line off the cd and you will be fine. after you do that install any apps you want, reboot, and let vista do its upgrades.

 

i was just browsing the gateway recovery center that grabbed off my D partition. Turns out i didnt make a system recovery cd (last option), just a app/drivers one.

 

now aint that something....lol

 

i seen that driver/app folder while i was telling him how to get to the recovery and was likes...ooops, let me copy this while i see it here...lol and copied it right in to my man partition where i did another system wide backup using acronis.

now im all set to crash my lappy for the next serious thread poster....lol

 

Lol, thats funny, I forgot to do that too at one point.

 

well i suppose a clean vista install is better than a bloatware install. If any finds a recovery cd .iso for factory settings or the driver/software for the hot keys let me know please.

 

yeah, cause i sure dont know everything and sure forgot about that. because i never made a restore dvd. i have always made resotore partitions then copy them to my server and leave one copy on the 2nd hard drive. and all my hp's had the swsetup folder, but the gateway didn't.

 

do you have any partitioning software

 

and flynnaz....there is a 6 second difference in cpu stress testing with wprime, between the 2.4 ghz to 3.0 ghz

 

not at the moment, why do you ask?

 

if you can get your d: partition to boot. you would be able to boot the correct gateway system recovery option

 

Vista has a built in partitioning program under admin tools in control panel, but I bet you know that

 

and i dont even want to go into bcedit....wooohoooo, that was a task to get mine to boot the restore partition correctly.

 

how would one boot off D using vistas partitioning software ?