Gateway Laptop Dead

[dktool]

Please advise if I am in wrong forum for this post.

Re: Gateway NV52 laptop, AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2.1 G, 4 G ram

This came with vista on it and a mail in for windows 7 update which I did get and installed. Worked great for 3 months then my daughter called from college (this is her machine) and said it died. The resident network people checked it and told her the hard drive crashed.
I told her to buy another laptop to finish the semister and I would try to fix it when she came home, that time is now.
I tried to invoke the restore partion, it seemed to want to work but midway through it produced an error saying couldn't copy image.
I'll try to go long story short to where I am now.
I replaced the hard drive, the bios does see it, I purchased a virgin windows 7 dvd,put the disc in and turned on. It goes from:

Press any key to boot from cd or dvd to:
Windows is loading files to:
Starting Windows to:
The hard drive light cycling on and off with the windows logo and starting windows on the screen for 10 minutes then all there is is a blank screen with a cursor and that is all it will do.

Any and all help is very much appreciated , this unit is not old enough to be nothing more that a paper weight, hopefully !

Thanks, Dean

[finito]

Welcome to the forums, Please take some time and introduce yourself at http://www.daniweb.com/forums/forum165.html

Is your harddrive visible in the BIOS?

What exactly was wrong with the laptop in the first place. I understand you were told it's a harddrive problem, but could you elaborate the symptoms?

[dktool]

Yes, the new drive shows in the bios, it previously showed a Hitachi and now shows a western digital.
Basically all I was told was that it would no longer operate, It was hard for me to get any further info.
I want to return it to a windows 7 system but without the upgrade version, that is why I purchase a 7 disc and new hard drive, figured I'd just start fresh.
I have never installed a new hard drive before, is there any preparation that must be done or will the 7 install disc do what is needed ?

[finito]

So you didn't even check to see if the Laptop operated before changing the Hard Drive?

I am asking what did you see when/if you did operate it what happened? where did it "Die"

You just have to create a partition, but you can do that with windows Installation.

If Windows doesn't like your drive I would suggest you get Ubuntu from http://www.ubuntu.com make a LiveCd, when it asks you to install click Try, this will let you format and Partition the drive.

Once in Click System-> Administration -> Disk Utility

Make Partition use Fat32, Don't set it to ext unless you start liking ubuntu and want to install that instead.

Shutdown and restart and Use your windows CD again.

But once again please tell me the symptoms prior to changing the Hard Drive.

[dktool]

I did try to start it prior to replacing the hard drive, would not boot at all. Then tried the restore invoke and it tried to restore but failed. Then ordered the factory system restore discs from gateway and again it failed part way through. After that it would no longer even try to restore, that is when I decided to stop wasting time and just start fresh with a new drive and os

[finito]

Hmm you are saying it wouldn't boot but you tried to do a system Restore?

Sorry I don't understand.

[dktool]

My definition of not booting is if it does not get to the windows start flash screen.
It would start but never get past the gateway flash screen.
When I invoked the ALT 10 command that is when it would try to restore from the hard drive but never complete.
Same thing happened when I tried the restore cds supplied by gateway.

[finito]

I doubt the problem is the Harddrive, if you get the same result with both the old and new Harddrive.

I would suggest you try LiveCD ubuntu to see if everything else is OK.

And then try to install Ubuntu. This will tell you your problem.

[dktool]

I have not tried installing the new 7 disc on the old hard drive, should I try that ?

[finito]

sure why not.