gateway M500 hard drive

[bailey]

I got a gateway M 500 laptop for repair today, it seams that it came with xp home on it and they had some body work on it, and they installed xp- pro, .on it and they want me to remove the corp xp and put xp home back on it, they even bought a new xp-home retail cd from staples for me to do this.
the problem is how to get the the corp. installation off the hard drive.

I am thinking of buying a laptop hard drive to a IDE adapter cable to connect it to my bench computer as a slave drive so I can format it and then put it back into the laptop to install the new xp-home cd.

question is, which adapter would be the best to do this ?

I talked to a gateway tech support and they told me to replace the hard drive.

[Lespaul20]

I'm assuming there is data that is needed on the drive?

[bailey]

no, there is nothing that is needed on the drive, it has all been saved to another computer already. and I already have all the drivers for it too.

[Panama Red]

Have you tried booting with the XP Home cd and just deleting the partiitions, bailey? Follow that up with a full format and clean install. If you want a versatile adapter, here's the one glc turned me onto.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2020&cpc=SCH

[bailey]

right now the system will not boot with anything, everything I tried comes up with invalid system disk,
it might be that the boot partition is missing or messed up.
when I get that adapter and connect it to my computer as a slave, then I think partition magic will let me put the drive back to where it should be and them be able to install the xp.

at least that is what I think will work.

[kilgoretrout]

Check the bios setup and make sure it's set to boot from the dvd drive first. If the winxp cd won't boot, try another bootable cd and see if it works.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by kilgoretrout Check the bios setup and make sure it's set to boot from the dvd drive first. If the winxp cd won't boot, try another bootable cd and see if it works.

dpne all that first.

[Lespaul20]

You shouldn't even need to have the Hard drive in to boot to the CD. Is there and option to change the boot device on the fly. I know on Dell you Press F12 to select a boot device without entering BIOS. And there you can choose the CD-ROM.

You shouldn't have any problem using the XP disk to do everything you need.

[bailey]

yes, but I still get the invalid system disk error.
I went through all that with the tech support, and some other things with them and it all ended up with replacing the hard drive.


the drive was devided into two partitions with partition magic and the first partition was deleted, that is what caused the boot problem, ans why I think what I plan to do to fix the drive may work ok.

just make it back into one active partition and them format it.
it should be like new then.

[Lespaul20]

So after changing this http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/...764faq56.shtml
you still get that error?

I guess I don't understand why the partitions on the hard drive have anything to do with booting to a cd.

[bailey]

yes , I understood what you were saying on that, I think that if the hard drive was partitiond into two partitions and the first partition was deleated and the second one was not made the active drive, then it will not let the system boot at all.

also I agree that it should still boot from a cd, but gateway says it won't without the active partation on the hard drive.

anyway the adapter was shipped today and I will continue with my plan to format the drive..

[bailey]

success, xp is now installing on the laptop

[Panama Red]

Good job bailey.

[Lespaul20]

Glad to hear it worked. I don't know about Gateway though.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by Lespaul20 Glad to hear it worked. I don't know about Gateway though.

not my laptop, it belongs to my neice.

I used partition magic to redo the hard drive while it was connected to my computer as a secondary master, it went as smoth as silk.
a freebe job.