Rain water leaked into my laptop. Trying to create recovery CD's from hard drive using an external output

Basically rainwater leaked into my backpack, and seeped into the venting of the GPU in my 7805u. I dissembled it, blow dried all the parts for 1 hour and reassembled it and set it near a heater for 3 days. I started it up yesterday and it worked FINE (it was set into hibernation mode before I went into the rain). Keyboarded was perfect, everything was intact, info etc.

I ran the computer for 2-3 hours, running some bluray movies and games, to make sure whatever liquid that was possibly in there, would be dried by the heat. Then I restarted my computer....everything went to hell from there.

A black screen popped up saying I could choose to reboot the computer normally or have the hard drive repaired (which takes 1 hr and does nothing, then reboots).

I threw the hard drive into a thermaltake hard drive adapter (you put in a hard drive and you can access it via USB on another computer). I backed up all my important stuff.

Took me a couple hours to bypass the "Disk is inaccessible, Access denied" errors. Eventually I got into the hard drive and NOW im trying to run the gateway recovery DVD's program. I can't find a way to get it to work externally. Can someone help me PLEASE?

 

I find it weird that I can actually access the hard drive by usb on another computer and everything is intact, but the second I pop it into the 7805u, it pretends like it doesn't even exist.

I'm trying to talk to gateway and see if they can repair it. Will they repair broken keys if its under the warranty? I have like 10 days until the 1 yr limited warranty expires.

 

i would just send it in because as it stands it doesnt really seem like its going to work correctly. do it before your warranty is up or youll be screwed.

 

That is my goal. I am still talking to gateway. What should I say to them, to have the highest chance of getting a brand new 7805u/fixed up in the best manner?

I told them my hard drive was completely dead. It just so happens that I found out its still alive, but barely.

I'm just afraid they will open up the hard drive compartment, drop a used hard drive in there and send it back to me without checking anything else out. And then I will end up with a (still) broken, out of warranty laptop.

 

so does the laptop itself work fine? download a linux live disc like ubuntu and try to boot into that. im not sure what you could tell gateway but try to make it sound like there is something wrong with it on the mobo like say the gpu or something. dont lie though if you say something doesnt work "make sure" it doesnt work before you send it in.

 

i was actually waiting to see if anyone knew a way to start up the "gateway recovery management" program from running the hard drive via usb. im not sure if the laptop itself is running well, im just keeping the hard drive running because im afraid if i turn it off, it wont start up again.

 

Try this dedicated thread for p7805
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=334196&page=296

I bet there might be someone willing to send you a copy of the recovery disk they made.

 

Thanks I will look into that if gateway doesn't take my laptop into repair.

Do you have an suggestions on what I should exactly say to 'force' them to look at my motherboard? I know theres something wrong with it, but what can I say to them?

 

Act as if you dont know whats wrong and make them do a thorough check up rather than telling them this is wrong and just make them look into that.

 

The sooner you send it in the better before the warranty runs out. Act dumb and see what they say after they take a look at it. Just say it stopped working all of the sudden.

 

If the hard drive can be accessed fine it is not a hard drive problem.

To double check you can plug it into another computer (SATA port) and make sure it's in BIOS and then installed and initialized when you boot into the primary OS. Then you can also confirm you can see the file structure and read/write to the drive. The bad news is though, if the hard drive is fine, it's something else :\

Does the 7805 display the hard drive model in BIOS? Are the other devices such as the cd drive model displayed in bios? Have you tried booting into safe mode (F8 before windows loads, after BIOS)?

I agree you would probably be better off playing dumb than telling them what you THINK the problem is. If the hard drive seems fine but the 7805 isnt reading from the drive, tell them you think the motherboard has failed also. It could be a problem with the controller, connections, ports, etc. Make sure you tell them to confirm the laptop works and boots into Windows fine before they send it back. If they try to tell you it's out of warranty AFTER they sent it back to you and you originally sent it in while it was still under warranty, talk to a supervisor and tell him that's unacceptable and don't stop until they let you send it (back) in.