gateway m-6862 *** problem!

ok im sorry if this is in the wrong place but its urgent! ok so i got a gateway m-6862 from bestbuy with all the same specs as you other people who have one, anyway it worked fine so i thought i would download the crysis demo to test how well it worked, i used u torrent and downloaded it but when i opened it up it asked me what to open it with ,:| and... i accidentally clicked the ok button, and it had selected internet explorer so it (ie) tryed to open up and then closed so i thought darn! stupid junk file! >:[ then i tryed to open up a chess game (chess titans) and it tryed to open up in ie and then closed! >:O then i tryed something else and the same thing happened! same for everything else! even system stuff like system restore! so i looked it up on the internet and couldnt find anything like this on it! i have never installed or reinstalled an operating system before and thought i would reinstall vista (64 bit is what i had and reinstalled) so i did but then when i finished the screen resulution was 1074-780 or something like that and when i tryed to change it (ive done this often before) it was already the highest screen resolution! i couldn't change it to 1280-um.. you know... like 800 i guess which was what it was at before. not only that but it didn't have any of the programs that were on it when i got it (i guess thats normal though) it couldn't recognize my graphics card or use the internet either saying i need drivers for them. i dont know much about drivers and so i dont know what to do. anyone know what i can do? has anyone had this problem before? i dont have a warranty on my laptop so that wont work and the crysis demo wasn't a virus i got it from the main site. thanks to anyone who can help! ps im writing this on my pda so dont comment on punctuation. (heh or spelling)

 

In the window where it asked you to what to open it with is a little checkbox that says something like "make this the default app for opening files with that extension". Sounds like that box was checked and IE became the default app for opening programs. Neat trick. Once you get out of this mess, pay careful attention to those popup windows

For your current situation, I'm assuming you just installed Windows from the media that came with your laptop, yes? I believe your laptop has a recovery partition. If you reboot, you can hit F2 to enter BIOS or F10 or F12 to select boot device. Hit whatever it tells you to hit to select the boot device and select the recovery partition. Hopefully you haven't formatted over it.

The other alternative is to download all the driver's from gateways website and install them. You'll find them here-> http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/search.asp?st=pn&param=1015594R When did you buy this laptop from bestbuy? It should have a 1yr warruntee.

 

umm i hit f2 and it goes to bios settings so now what do i do?

 

ok when i enter boot menu it gives me 3 options 1=IDE CD: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7563A-(P

2= SATA HDD: WDC WD2500BEVS-22UST0-(S1)

thwn it says 7=Boot to LAN : Realtek Boot Agent


and then an option saying enter setup

what should i do?

 

yes

you can download the drivers and install them

just find out which ones you need and google them

the max res is at 1024x because you dont have GFX drivers installed

EDIT: do you have ethernet or wireless working?

 

no it needs those drivers too.

 

i downloaded some drivers but my wifi driver wont work it says its either corrupted or something else. also when i look at memory there's a partition that says recovery partition and its full, so i can use that but i don't know how. can anyone give me direct instructions?