trying to recover vista / upgrade to win7, older gateway laptop, now it's stuck

I am at my wits end on this, thought it would be simple after installing win 7 on my desktop, but this older gateway laptop is kicking my butt.

It's a gateway MD7820u, orig came with vista, which was slow and painful to use. It is mostly in use as a display driver for my movie projector. I have a Win 7 install disk with an extra serial I wasn't using, so I figured I would upgrade the laptop.....

I ran the compatibility checker, and it checked out with a few minor issues, I tried the upgrade option, but that didn't work, something about a missing flag 9 setting or something. Anyway, I went ahead and tried a fresh full install, which looked like it was working fine, asked for computer name, connected to a home group, set a password....

But when it tries to boot, it starts to load windows, then says "Please wait a moment....." then goes to a Gateway recovery management screen, which has only two options, restore system from factory default, and exit, the only one that is active is the exit option, the restore option is grey and not selectable. When I loaded win7 it asked where I wanted it, and it showed the hard drive with a protected recovery sector that is still there, around 14gb worth, but I have no way to get to it.

Gateway lists a newer BIOS for Win7, not sure how to mount it on this laptop, not sure that is the problem, but if someone had ideas on how to get unstuck either back to Vista, or forward to get the Win7 to start properly, that would be great. I don't think it's a driver issue, since win7 sees the hard drive, and loaded it's system there, and got so far as to see the wireless networks in the area. I get the feeling that the computer is expecting to see vista starting, and when it sees something else, it freezes up and goes into recovery mode.


So now I'm stuck with no way forward and no way back.


Thanks much in advance.

 

the protected section of the hard drive is where your backup is and is normally locked.
im no expert but the only way to get rid of that partition and the backup is with a total wipe with something like dareks boot and nuke (DBAN) video below.

only problem would be if you did wipe everything and then the lappy still didnt like windows 7 and then you had no backup to restore to factory settings.
if you do still try it make sure you have all the drivers you need for everything burnt to disc before you start.

 

in the windows 7 setup program it has the option to format and reshape the partitions in the drive, I didn't try to format the protected partition, so I don't know if it would actually have done that or not. I have found that Gateway sells an "e-recovery" disk that will supposedly re-load everything to orig configuration, even if the hidden partition is gone, so I might try re-formatting the whole thing and then loading 7 since the hard drives recovery doesn't seem to be working anyway.

 

What versions of Vista/Win7 are you upgrading from/to?

FWIW, I finally upgraded this Toshiba P205 (c. 2008) from Vista Ultimate to Win 7 Ultimate about 14 months ago without any problems whatsoever.

 

Don't recall the version of vista, home something or other... the new system is win 7 ultimate, it will load 32 or 64 bit versions.

 

The exact procedure you used to upgrade isn't clear from your original post. This is the upgrade media I used:
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, Upgrade Edition for XP or Vista users (PC DVD), 1 User: Amazon.co.uk: Software

Product number is 6/11-X15-60629-03 as listed on the lower rear cover. At the top of that rear cover it clearly states:
"If you are upgrading from Windows XP or certain versions of Windows Vista, you will need to back up your files and settings, perform a clean install and then re-install your existing files, settings and programmes. Visit windows.microsoft.com/upgrade for important information."

Those "certain versions" of Vista would be any version of Vista that isn't Ultimate.

Did you perform a system backup before attempting the Win 7 upgrade?

 

I was attempting a clean install of win7 because it didn't want to update the version of vista I had, so that matches your info. Because this computer was only used for playing movies and such through the projector, there were no files or settings to back up. I figured (wrongly) that if the upgrade didn't work, that I would be able to access the reserved part of the hard drive and recover Vista back to the original state. After doing some more research, I have found that Gateway sells recovery media based on the serial number of the laptop, so I can get them (~$20) and hopefully get back to where I was before (clunky Vista). But I would really like to get 7 running on it. Then it might actually get used for more than a glorified movie player.

The media I used was a system builder disk, not an upgrade, so It will theoretically do a clean install from a new disk even if vista is not present. I suspect though that gateway has something in the bios that doesn't like the new system and tries to enter recovery mode. It's frustrating that it gets so close to working, the drivers for the video card, hard drive access, wireless, all seem to be there, but once 7 tries to start for the first time on it's own, it can't.

 

I'd suggest wiping the drive clean - including the recovery partition - and performing a clean install of W7.

There usually is a setting in BIOS enabling you to make the partition visible and format it. Or, download DBAN and just nuke the drive, then start fresh...

Good luck.

 

A clean install of Win 7 is an excellent idea. However, it may be too late for that because sale of all Windows 7 media except for Windows 7 Professional ceased as of 31/10/14.

Win 7 Pro is now the only legally obtainable version available. Even that is only available as OEM on new machines, IIRC. Luckily my new custom built Toshiba Tecra offers Win 7 Pro as standard installed OS.

Microsoft now seem quite content in pushing that Win 8.1 rubbish.

 

My understanding is that OP is in possession of a "system builder" media, so availability of the software/key should be a non-issue...

 

I will try wiping the drive, as a last resort the $20 disks should give me back vista, not that I really want it. If that doesn't work, I will attempt a BIOS update.

 

update! Tried wiping the hidden partition and that seemed to do the trick. In windows setup there was an option to change the layout of the partitions, so I just removed the hidden portion, making the hard drive just one drive instead of two. Result was a clean install of Win 7! Whatever was on the hidden partition was evidently causing the problems.

Big thanks to ajkula66 for the suggestion! I will now have to go through the system to see if there are any devices missing, but the display, wireless, keyboard, touchpad, and hard drives all seem to be there. Just ran update and rebooted, and it's still working, so I will keep my fingers crossed. I will post here if I have any problems,