P6860FX stuck in endless boot cycle

I'm hoping I can get some quick help here. I've contacted gateway technical support too. What happens is I turn the computer on, it loads up the Gateway menu with the options to go to the Bios and the Boot Menu (both of which work). Then it goes to a loading screen with a bar that says Microsoft underneath. It will load for a few seconds then go to a blue screen which flashes quickly. Then it starts over.

Now, it used to do this ever since I got it, but the second time through it would start Vista normally instead of getting a blue screen.

The last thing it did last night was to install a windows update for vista.

So, what should I do? Would it help to start taking things out of the boot cycle?

I bought the computer a few months ago as refurbished. That warranty has expired, but I have a square trade warranty. I'd prefer to fix it myself if possible though.

 

Its most likely a problem with Vista and not the laptop itself (since you mentioned that the BIOS menu |Gateway Menu| opens).


I would try doing a recovery using the recovery disks that were provided with your or the one that you SHOULD have burnt when you got your laptop. Its just that the recovery disk that is provided with it is x86 which only supports up to 3GB of memory and the Recovery Disk that you are supposed to burn is x64 which supports 4GB and up.

Give that a go and tell us what happens.

 

Before you go the recovery disk route...

When you get to the gateway splash screen, instead of pressing f10 or f2, press F8 several times. It should come up with Vista boot options. Select booting in safe mode and see if it comes up that way. If you can, use system restore to go back to the last save point (assuming you hadn't disabled system restore).

 

Thanks. I didn't know how to get to the system restore from the boot screen. I'm assuming it was the latest vista update that is causing the problem so hopefully the restore will work. If it doesn't work then I do have my recovery disks somewhere and I'll try that.

 

Alright, went to lunch and tried your suggestions. First, the F8 key did open up a menu that allowed me to try a few things. Safe mode did not work. I used the gateway repair tool and that did work and let me do a system restore. I restored to last night and it didn't work, then tried a few days earlier but it still didn't work. The auto repair tool didn't detect any problems. I'm currently doing a complete windows recovery from the hard drive which should save all my current files onto a backup directory on the C: drive. I did not see an option to restore from my back up disks, so how would I do that if this doesn't work?

Gateway tech support emailed gave me some things to try once I get the complete error code from the blue screen. Although it seems that most of their fixes require me to be able to get to Windows so I'm not sure that will be much help.

 

Yea.. if you got a digital camera(I know it takes good timing) try and snap a shot of the BSOD and post it in the forum. If you install/restore Vista and still have issues..it's not the OS. You already know that.

 

try taking out one of the stick of RAM you have and try booting again. if it does the same thing, try booting again with the other stick of ram.

the BSOD normally appears like that for 3 main reasons i have seen up to date. RAM, Hard drive, bad system files (reinstall the OS). most of the time a reinstall of the OS works.

 

Agreed, by far its the most common cause of BSOD