Questions about gateway laptop

Hey all. I'm a newbie laptop owner, so I don't know if my issues are gateway specific or what, which is why I'm posting here. It's a M465-E, if that helps.

First off, can power bricks go bad? I generally leave my laptop plugged into a/c power and occasionally the laptop with switch to battery power and won't recognize that it's plugged in. I'll switch sockets and it will sometimes register that it's plugged in, but not always. So, I'm wondering if there's a short in the cord or if I need to do something to a setting on the laptop itself.

Second, I currently have a 60GB HD in the computer. I wanted to upgrade and found a Western Digital 320GB HD for cheap. It's a SATA HD, which (according to what I've found) should work in the computer. However, when I tried to install windows, it didn't recognize that there was any HD installed. Will my laptop not support that large of a HD or could the HD be bad?

I don't know much about computer hardware, but I'll try to answer any questions as best as I can. Thanks for any help!

 

It's possible that power bricks go bad, however in my old gateway it was a matter of the power connector becoming loose over time in the back of the lappy and sliding out.

As for the HDD, are you trying to install XP?

 

So, it's possible that there's not much I can do about the power brick? It's a used computer, so I don't know how much wear it had in the past. I've had it a month and this has happened 3-4 times.

And yes, I'm trying to install XP.

 

Yeah the brick could have gone bad. They are easy to replace as I bought one on the cheap from ebay for my MT6451. Like 20 dollars cheap...


The problem you are running in to is that your trying to use a SATA drive and XP doesn't natively support SATA drives. You need to slipstream them into the XP CD for it to work...Here is a guide that will help out.


Get the Service Pack 3 components, WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe from here, and put the file under C:\

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...a8-5e76-401f-be08-1e1555d4f3d4&DisplayLang=en

Download the Internet Explorer 8, IE8-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe and put it under C:\

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...FamilyID=341c2ad5-8c3d-4347-8c03-08cdecd8852b

And download the SATA driver 32-bit Floppy Configuration Utility for Intel® Matrix Storage Manager, f6flpy3286.zip from the following site. Unzip it in a new folder and name it SATA driver. Put this folder under C:\

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/con...91&DwnldId=17061&strOSs=&OSFullName=&lang=eng

Download and install the program nLite.

http://www.nliteos.com/download.html

Put your original XP CD into the DVD drive. Run the program nLite and click Next. In the page of “Locating the Windows installation”, click Browse >> My Computer >> DVD drive, a window pops up.

“Select where to save the CD installation files for modification”.

Choose or create an empty folder.

Click OK, a window pops up. Click C: >> Make a new folder >> type New XPCD >> OK

The nLite starts to copy all the files of the original XP CD into the folder C:\New XPCD.

Click Next. In the page of “Presets”, click Next. In the page of Task Selection, select Integrate [Service Pack], [Hot fixes, Add-ons, and Update Packs], [Drivers], and [Create Bootable ISO], click Next.

In the page of [Service Pack], click Select >> WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe >> Open. The nLite starts to integrate the service pack 3 components into the folder of New XPCD. Click Next.

In the page of [Hot fixes, Add-ons, and Update Packs], click Insert >> C: >> IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe >> Next.

In the page of [Drivers], click Insert >> Single Driver, a window pops up, select C:\SATA driver, 2 selections show up, select iaAHCI, click Open, then pops up another window, in which there are more than 10 selections, select Intel® ICH8M-E/M and ICH9M-E/M SATA AHCI Controller, click OK >> Next, a window pops up with a question “Do you want to start the process?”, click Yes. Take out the original XP CD and put a blank CD into the DVD drive.

Click Next. In the page of Bootable ISO, select Direct Burn for Mode, type New XPCD for Label, select minimum for Burn Speed, then click Burn. The nLite starts burning the New XPCD. After completion, you have a new XP installation CD now. You can use it to install XP smoothly.

 

Well, we tried what you suggested and we had the same issue as before, with it not recognizing that there's a HD. We tried to install it by connecting the HD through the USB drive and it did install, but it keeps crashing on reboot. We talked to the place where we bought it and they suggested we contact Western Digital for updated drivers (they said to put them on a floppy instead of a cd), so I guess that's our next step.

I never thought this would be such a complicated thing to do.

 

Just an update, in case anyone was wondering. My husband did the above suggestions, but added the extra drivers for the hard drive and it worked! I now have my 320GB HD!! Thanks for the help, Wingsbr!!

 

No problem, glad to hear that it worked. Yes it's a complicated and convoluted process, but tis' computers in the 21st century.