Official P-7805u Owners Longue.

I got the 7801u... (sorry this thread is for the 7805, i think we might share the thread ) with the 320gb hard drive. But I can only see 288GB, while I should be getting 298GB, where are the other 10gb? does this computer have a 10gb hidden recovery partition?

 

yep, it's the recovery partition taking it up

 

1. so if there's this recovery partition, why do i need to create recovery disks for?

2. in the "memory" tab of CPU-Z, it says I have 4gb DDR2, but in the "SPD" tab, it says it's 4GB DD3. Why's that? Any ideas?

 

Eh well sorry zak, the Mod never PMed me back and ignoring this thread didn't even get it to go into the old threads :\ I tried
If you want, you can give me the info you were going to put, and I'll put it on the first post with "ALL THANKS TO (Your name), If your going to give rep, give it to him" Or something?

 

1: I believe the recovery partition is the part that you burn to the recovery discs..

2: All of ours say that, but its DDR3 for sure

 

But do i need to burn them? I'm just out of dvds for the moment and i was hoping i could just stick to the partition.

 

Honestly I was wondering the same thing, why do we have to make the discs when its already on the HDD..
I'm guessing for backup purposes such as HDD failure or something..?

 

That's a good question. I'm thinking that the recovery discs would be very helpful if you had a problem where you couldn't boot into windows at all. For this type of issue they would be a godsend.

 

WTH!!! $400 swing in a matter of days?

 

Got the machine a few weeks ago and I like it.

However, I am getting unexplained beeps from the machine. They happen randomly. They are not connected to any of my running processes that I can find.

They do not seem to have any bad effect, and my performance is good overall. But it is very strange.

 

Here's a good bag:

The Shaun Jackson Laptrap Grande

I have used this bag for over three years on a previous 17" laptop (Hypersonic). Once I upgraded to the Gateway 7805u, I thought I would have to get a bigger bag, but I was wrong. It fits nicely (but you must take out the battery).

Pros: This bag has a very rigid perimeter guard. It saved my Hypersonic from getting crunched on more than one occasion. I've looked at dozens of 17" backpacks and bags, and I have not found any others which have edge protection of this kind.

It turns into a lap desk. Not a killer feature considering the typical usage of this notebook, but kind of cool anyway.

You can sling it like a messenger bag, or use detachable backpack straps.

The nylon is really tough.

Cons: You have to take the battery out, and put it in the side pocket. (not that big a deal for me)

It doesn't have much storage. Only enough for the power brick, a mouse, a few small peripherals, a few small knicknacks, about a dozen discs, and a few magazines or something.

EDIT:

Well- it appears the Laptrap Grande might be going obsolete, but SJD seems to be replacing it with something which looks just as good. If anyone gets one of these, give us a report.


2ND EDIT:
I completely forgot to mention, the other older SJD case is the " Big Back Office", which is like my Laptrap, but holds more, and the backpack straps are beefier. It looks like they still have some of 'em in stock. I might just have to upgrade. If the Laptrap fits the 7805u, I'm sure the BackOffice will also.

 

This was mentioned in another thread: "P801U" for $1199 (free shipping)

Gateway confirms Mfg Part No. is for P7801U.

 

Hello fellow p-7805u owners! I'm new to NBR and this is my first post. I'm amazed at all the posts and help people have given.

I purchased my 7805 in Wilmington, DE on 1/26/09 without any knowledge about it. It just seemed to be a great deal for the price, I paid a flat $1149 for mine as DE is tax free. I got home and promptly did some web research after opening it. I know I should have researched first but I got lucky and got the WUXGA LG version. I want to post my batch number but I don't know where to find it. BTW, they still had a few left if anyone in the area is interested.

I found the original p-7805u thread here from a google search and read through the whole thing. Yup, 200 some odd posts. It took me 3 days, LOL. Anyway I was hoping to get some information about the preinstalled Vista partition because this is my first Vista machine.

I have made my recovery disks through the Gateway Recovery Management and they burned fine. My questions are, can I delete the 10GB or so partition? Will it still show as 2 different partitions if I am able too? Will my recovery disks serve just like the partition if I ever want to bring my rig back to factory specs?

Ideally I would like to do a clean install without any bloatware but I know I cannot because I don't have a real Vista disk (Upgrade Anytime, OEM, etc). Does anyone know where I can get one for cheap?

In the end I'd like to have just one clean partition (with the bloatware, i know) and still be able to recove from my recovery disks if the need ever arises. I did not make a driver and application disk, is that necessary? Can't I just get that stuff from the Gateway website?

I realize there are a lot of questions here and probably answered somewhere else in these forums. But I figured I'd throw them out there to my p-7805u brethern to see what respones I get. I appreciate any and all advice given in advance!

 

The recovery disks will give you more or less a clean install, the "apps and drivers disk" has the bloatware and the drivers, but you can choose what to install off of it, obviously you just want the drivers in that case.

 

I bought my 7805u a few days ago. It took visits to three Best Buys, and calls to seven (7) others. I finally found a batch number that was a possibility (I015623) for having the 1920x1200 screen.

I do some light gaming, but am primarily using this computer for graphic design and as a GPS using Streets&Trips (I travel... ALOT). The higher resolution is great for photoshop work, and even better for S&T. I can now see much more of the map, and it is in much better detail.

Prior to this I had a Macbook. No software issues whatsoever, but in the 1.5 years of owning it, it burned through two hard drives. I gave up, and decided to come back to the dark side. This is my first long-term commitment to Vista, and so far it hasn't been that great.

I have been getting random BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) crashes about 2 or 3 times a day. I have gone through most of the reports, and they vary from my Sprint Mobile Broadband drivers, to various IRQL issues. I took it to a Geeksquad agent, and they said they'd have to do an exchange on the laptop. As no one else has the 1920X1200 screen, I said no. Their other solution was to send it in for two weeks. As I'm currently on the road and can't do without a computer, I had to turn down that option as well.

Is there any way to fix this issue? Is anyone else having these types of problems? Help will be GREATLY appreciated!!

 

Great, thanks Big Mike! Now to delete the partition and "get back" my 10+ GB, do I delete the partition in disk utility? If I do, will it still show as 2 different partitions or will it be "absorbed" into the other 298 GB?

 

It won't be absorbed in by default, and gateway had the great (sarcasm) foresight to put it as the first 10 or so GB of the drive, which means that the built in partitioning utility for vista can't expand the volume to fill it (or at least I'm pretty sure it can't). Gparted is free but I wouldn't use it as it doesn't play well with Vista partitions and will probably kill your boot record. Let me think about this for a bit to come up with a good way to fix it.

 

http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

Get HWMonitor and check out your temps, some people have had issues with overheating due to poorly installed heatsinks. If its not that I'd suspect driver issue or hardware failure.

 

Also -

Did you make the recovery disks?

If so, you probably should go back to a "factory fresh" version of your system. Check it for awhile to see if you still get this problem.

Then, make sure every program you add is certified to run on the Vista 64-bit version.

If they are, then install one, run the system for a day or so, if it's OK, then install another.

It is possible that your problem is not a Gateway problem nor is it a Vista problem, it may be an incompatible software issue.

 

Thanks for the advice! The first thing that I did was do a fresh install of Vista. I've had too many issues in the past with botched installs out of the box.

I believe my biggest mistake was installing a large deal of software from the get-go. Some of the install files I was using were from my XP computer... I was mistakenly assuming that they should (more or less) work. I've deleted about 5 programs so far, and have installed fresh versions off of the companies' websites (Vista versions, wherever they are available.

I am going to try and run Memtest next time I stop at a hotel to see if it is a RAM issue. That wouldn't be fun (considering DDR3 ram is rather high atm).

Gaming is great on the computer though - the only crash I've had is Sim City 4 after about 2 hours. Then again, it's not exactly built for vista otb. Call of Duty World at War and Fallout 3 looked beautiful. I ran them at 1920X1200, Extreme (or equivalent) graphics settings, and didn't have a single hickup.

Other than that, if anyone else has suggestions -- let me know!

 

Yes, based on what you just said, I suspect a software incompatibility issue.

Hopefully, you'll narrow it down to the offending program.

 

Well, I was able to reformat the Vista partition using Kill Disk. But, as you stated I am unable to expand my main partition to absorb the 10 GB partition. It was unallocated so I allocated it. I attempted to load Vista on the 10 GB partition with the hopes of then deleting the 288 GB partition with Kill Disk and seeing if I could absorb it by extending the 10 GB. For some reason the recovery onto the 10 GB failed so I was unable to do that. I'm stuck now. Any ideas yet?

 

Hey whats up all. Just joined this forum. I just bought my 7805u from BB for $1149. And i guess i got lucky cause i have the LG screen(1920x1200)so that was sweet. I was torn between the Asus G50vt or my 7805. But spec for spec the 7805 was all around better. But the Asus was very eye appealing w/ the flashing lights and all. So far i am very pleased w/my purchase, i have already Oc'd and Uv'd this machine. Dont have any score's to post yet still tweakin a few things. Oh and my batch #is I007775. peace

 

Okay, Gateway tech support people are morons. Here's what my disk manager looks like. Can anyone help me merge the two partitions? Should I try using partition magic? I don't care if I have to reformat as long as I can have just one hard drive.

 

If you have access to Paragon partition manager it seems to work better with Vista. I was going to try and find a free alternative like Gparted (but that actually works with vista partitions without screwing them up as gparted seems to)

 

Is Paragon free?

 

Have any of you tried this:

Easeus Partition Manager Home Edition?

 

Here's their website - EASEUS Partition Manager 3.0 Home Edition - FREE FOR HOME USERS ONLY

 

Oops - Windows Vista 32-bit Only.

Drat!

 

Unfortunately, no. Best program I've found to date though. I'll see what I can come up with on the free tip.

 

K, how about this, shuck in your recovery cd #1 and boot from it and tell me what happens, does it bring up this screen to set up vista:
http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/image49.png
?

 

Hi guys. New 7805u owner and loving it so far. Question for you guys. I'd like to maybe install XP pro on this or maybe even Vista 32 bit. But I am not sure of the motherboard chipset, or how hard it is going to be to get the drivers for XP and so forth. Does anyone know what the chipset is? Also if anyone has already done this and can point me in the right direction for drivers it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

Yep, exactly like that.

 

Well if One Harddrive is all you want than you've had it that way since you bought it ;]
Now if you just want one partition, thats a different story Just playing with you. Good luck

 

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-gparted-to-resize-your-windows-vista-partition/

Those instructions should be usable then, you can use the CD to fix the MBR if Gparted screws it up, I didn't realize that the disks booted like a regular vista restore disk where you can fix the drive with it.

 

Looks good, I'll try it tonight after work. Thanks again!

 

Obviously those instructions are to change the size of the first partition rather than moving the second one to fill the space left by the first, but I think you can figure out what to do there. If you have any questions feel free to post or drop me a PM.

 

Just picked up my 7805u here in mid Missouri. Got the 1920x1200 rez for what it's worth. I'm wanting to upgrade the DVD to a Blu-Ray. Any idea where I can find hardware? Ebay has some from China but I'm not sure if they will work or not on this laptop.

Also, anyone running XP sp3? I'm not a Vista fan but wouldn't mind an A'OK from someone before I wipe it.

 

To quote myself from yet another 7805u thread, lol, this was my experiences with windows XP, it definitely works but there's a few issues, if you search my user name in the advanced search you'll see posts about the audio fix and other crap, but mainly my info came right out of the 7811FX Windows XP thread as it's essentially the same laptop:

I'm running XP on mine. I just followed the instructions in the 7811FX windows xp "upgrade" thread. There are a few issues though, the mic for the webcam doesnt work, the audio requires some messing around to get working and its really not that elegant of a solution so far. The Esata port definitely doesn't work with the computer in IDE compatability mode, and thus far no one has tested it in AHCI mode that I've seen. The "hotstart" buttons don't work as well as you might hope either, the music note and DVD buttons dont work at all and the play/pause button is sorta buggy. Everything else works fine.

 

TY Big M

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm trying to get everything setup on it tonight. I bought the laptop for my wife and she's pretty pumped about all the bells and whistles on this one. She's an old school Mac user (Graphic Artist/Adobe CS3 Power User) and has decided to join the mainstream.

I'll just go with Vista for now then since I'm sure she wouldn't want things not working perfect. At least for now.

 

Honestly aside from the UAC nightmare that is Vista this laptop has more than enough oompf for running the operating system. I only installed XP because I needed it for a CAD program I use and I loathe UAC.

 

If you REALLY want to you can disable UAC, but it shoudln't be popping up that much (and it's a good thing...OS X has been doing it since the first version, and I think Linux distros do it too).

Anyway, I played with this laptop at Best Buy today, and LOVED the keyboard. Possibly the best I've ever used. It actually feels like...a keyboard.

If this thing had an LED backlight...

 

I did it. And it's only 3:00am, LOL

 

Lol congrats Hucker

 

Wow, just finished playing Oblivion and Fallout 3. Oblivion is really unplayable, default at medium settings and just buggy all over, fps were real low. Fallout 3 was a bit better at max, but it still had a low fps. Both crashed, too.

Everything else seems to run fine maxed out...so odd.

 

Okay, now that I've got my hard drive partition thing worked out I've got another issue. Not an issue really, just an annoyance.

While using the vertical scroll bar along the right side of my touch pad my cursor jumps about 2 inches to the left upon initial contact. As I am not used to this laptop yet, when I go to use the mouse pad to click on something I sometimes miss and make contact with the scroll area instead of the middle of the pad thus making my cursor jump left and miss my target (normally a link or icon). I've already downloaded and installed the new drivers from the Gateway website. They didn't have our model specifically so I used the ones compatible with p-78xx.

Any ideas fellas?

 

You might try the ones directly from synaptics website, I've always used them because they always seem to work better than the typically outdated ones provided by the manufacturers. I think its www.synaptics.com

 

I disabled all that fancy touchpad junk when I (briefly) had a Dell 1640. Really annoying, causing stuff to randomly jump all over the place if you're not in the right part of the pad (which is going to happen all the time since you shouldn't have to look at it to use it).

 

fallout 3 runs fine on high, didn't play oblivion on it (had it on the PS3) but it really shouldn't run much worse

somethings not right

is your laptop overheating? do you have updated drivers (shouldn't matter that much)? etc

 

I tried them, no dice. I've also discovered the cursor jumps while using the horizontal scroll bar along the bottom of the touch pad.