Gateway drive problem

TomTom · 14-10-2002 8:14am #1

I've a question for ye. I have a gateway 1Ghz with 256 Mb of RAM. One day the computer froze while a game was being played, so he restarted it. Since then the two drives (CR-RW and DVD) are not recognised by the computer. The guy who ownes it took out the battery on the motherboard to try reset the bios and when he put it back in after half an hour, one of the drives started to work. but as soon as he put a cd into it, the computer crashed. A message pops up as the computer is starting saying that no CD/DVD is detected so I doubt if it has anything to do with windows but then again you never know. They are not listed in the bios either. I checked the connections inside the computer and they all seem fine. The computer is running Win ME.

I don't have time to have a good look at the PC and since it was dropped into me on saturday I need to get it back to the guy soon.

All help greatly appricated.

Saruman · 14-10-2002 8:32am

Im assuming both drives are on the same IDE cable.. if so if one of them has died it can and will bring down the other one too! So try them individually as single drives (clear cmos first with jumper, dont mind battery!). Also if you are afraid of a windows problem then try them in DOS (with a boot disk), simple way to rule it out even though it does not sound like software.

BigEejit · 14-10-2002 9:39am

Im assuming both drives are on the same IDE cable.. if so if one of them has died it can and will bring down the other one too! So try them individually as single drives

That sounds like it'll find the faulty drive for ye .... if the user was not just after "having a look inside it, didn't touch anything, honest" and he was playing a game when it died then it could be the drive that had the cd/dvd rom drive in it (most likely anyway).
Just disconnect the ide cable from the cd/dvd and on powerup go into the bios and the other rom drive should be there...(I really dont think that resetting the bios will help, but it may, some mobo's/bios's are strange)

TomTom · 20-10-2002 10:47am

Reset the CMOS. Tried the drives, seperate to each other. Tried each as Master and Slave in IDE1 and 2. Tried with different cables. Still not working. I'm confused. Is it possible for both drives to go just like that?

Xithus · 20-10-2002 4:53pm

very same thing happened to a friend of mine's gateway, turned out that his writer was faulty.

Mixie · 20-10-2002 5:19pm

I had similar problems with my Gateway Athlon 1300 system, but after I unplugged the PC, and left it that way for about an hour it would return to normal. This happened about 4 times and the above fixed it each time. I rang Gateway Tech. Support to see if there was any 'fix' for this problem, or if they had even heard of similar cases with other customers. Not surprisingly they said no.

3 months later, and it happens again, this time CD/RW only (not DVD), and my 'quickfix' didn't work. Rang Gateway and they sent me a replacement CD/RW drive. It worked for a day before it stopped. They sent me a further 3 reconditioned CD/RW drives before I got one that worked more than 2 days - but it tends to crash the PC if you do a simulation prior to burn irregardless of the software used (Nero, CDR-Win, or even the bundled Roxio Easy CD Creator).

Good luck getting yours fixed.

TomTom · 21-10-2002 8:23am

good luck?
I need more than that at this stage.
It belongs to a friend of mine and he droped it up to see if I could do anything with it.

Whats the story with gateway in Ireland. Is there a drop in centre or anything that he could send the drives to?

Mixie · 21-10-2002 8:49am

Normally, if you ring them, and they're going to replace the drive, they'll ship it via ups/whatever to you. They'll also give you a 'returns number'. When your replacement arrives, install it, and place your old drive into the box the new one came in. Write the returns number on the box, and UPS should arrive within 5 working days to pick it up (though you can ring them with a time/drop it to their depot according to the delivery guy).

As far as I know though, theres no drop in centre here, however they do allow you to ship the whole PC to them in the UK for repair via UPS (they pay for it) - maybe this is just for small businesses though?. Try phoning 1800 46 2000 and asking.

[I've said UPS deliver em, but im not too sure about that, I seem to get a different delivery company with every part :rolleyes: ]

Saruman · 22-10-2002 8:44am

No its not just for business. and once the PC is in warranty they will book a service and ship it off to the UK for repair. There was a drop in center when Gateway where around.. since they went out of business its all 3rd party companies.. even their support line is run by another company... To be fair at least they left some semblance of support! They could have not bothered with that and left everyone to fend for themselves. Anyway chances are your system is in warranty, its not that old.. depends.. most of them were 3 year warranty but in the last yeat it was a 2 year standard warranty so just be sure and ring them. It is possible for both drives to die but never seen it.

Just to clarify.. you did try each drive on its own right? Oh also try slaving each off the hard disk which is recognised i assume! See if its seen or pulls down the hard drive too..

Gateway drive problem

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