I've got a vista Home Pemium that came installed on my pc, a gateway gm5664. Because of a continuos crashing I've tried to reinstall it using the original gateway operating system CD but cannot go further than "gathering files" step, after that it shuts down my pc. It already did it 20 times so I gave up. Anyone with experience on what can it be?
I've done a memory test before the disc was reformatted but it came up fine. I checked the disc for error but seems okay as well.
Help will be highly appreciated since I have a dead pc with data on a second hard drive inside that contains info regarding very important documents that i need so much.
If the second hard drive has more than one partition and one of the partitions doesn't contain data and is large enough, you could install Vista on it. I'm assuming the second drive doesn't have an OS on it. Just something to think about if you get into a pinch. In the meantime, I think Richc46 has it covered.
The second hard drive doesn't have any OS but it wouldn't let me reach the option on where to install, it shuts down before that so I do not what to do. I have an old PC from which I'll remove off the hard rive then connect it where the actual C drive is and see what it happens. Thank you for helping. I'll keep you all posted later.
Well, this is weird but I laid the pc on one side (instead the box being standing) and it worked; got installed.
I do not have an explanation for this.
It showed a BSOD at certain point showing "driver power estate failure" though but after that it seems stabilized.
I think the reason you couldn't install on the second drive is because you have to disconnect the original drive first. Otherwise, it's going to keep trying to boot from the original drive. However, it seems to be a mute point since you got Vista installed.
I remember a thread in another forum a very long time ago where a person had to turn the computer on it's side. I can't remember what caused the problem. Might have been a loose connection.
I stood up the pc and close the side cover and guess what... it shut down. now I'm rebooting with the pc laying on the side to see what happens but it did not happen before and i installed 140+ windows updates.
If the fan for the PSU (power supply) isn't running then it might be over heating and malfunctioning. If you are sure that it isn't running then it's probably time to replace your PSU. DO NOT try to fix it yourself unless you are specially trained and equipped to deal with PSUs. Even when they are off there is still enough juice in one to kill you. It is safe to remove it just to open it.
If it is still under warranty then contact gateway.
