MX7120 "Operating System not Found"

Hello I purchased a MX7120 online and the person who sold it to me had loaded win7 evaluation copy on which expired in Oct. and the program would not let me load XP which I prefer. So this where I messed everything up by externally reformatting the hard drive. I tried to laod Xp on this drive but no matter what cd I put in all I get is the message "OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND". Any suggestions, is there any way back from this. It is a Gateway is ther anything unique to gateway that I am missing?

 

You need to boot from the CD

You can go into the bios and change the "boot order" or "boot priority", or if you have the option for a Boot Menu you can simply press the key for that and then choose the cd drive.

 

I already have set my bios to cd first. It does not matter what cd I put in i've tried to update my drivers and it still get the same message.

 

What do you mean you've tried to update your drivers?

If it's already set as the first boot device are you sure the CD is bootable? Can you boot from the CD in other computers?

Do you have any kind of usb flash drive or media card plugged in?

If you want to force it to boot from the CD and don't have the boot menu option you can remove all the other entries from the boot order. You will simply have to put the hard drive back after the first restart so the installation can resume on the hard drive.

 

Thank You for your help, the cd does boot up on other computers so I will try to force it as you are suggesting. Also it does have usb and I have tried to boot from there with no luck.

 

Well I tried forcing as you described with the same result Operating system not found. Could anyone suggest where to find a boot disc for the MX7120?

 

You DONT want to have a flash drive or other media plugged in.

It sounds like your cd drive is being lazy (Assuming it works). What you have to do in this scenario is get the drive to have the disk ready and spun up when the computer is ready to boot.

What you'll have to do is open the cd drive (Not all the way, it just has to be open so you can close it) and then close it so the drive will start spinning the CD as it gets ready to read the disk. This has to be timed right so the disk is spun up when the computer is booting (After BIOS POST) so it immediately reads from the CD. This will probably take more than one try, may require several restarts (Pressing and holding the power button or ctrl+alt+delete) to get it timed right.

There is no specific boot disk for the MX7120. You said the disk boots fine in your other computers so it's just a matter of getting it to boot in your MX7120.