gateway 420 gr is dying?

crown711

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2002
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gateway 420 starts win xp logo w/3 lil' balls going across then hangs ,monitor lite is still
on.
my friend sent it back to gateway ,they changed hdd's (twice)
after a short while ,same problem.
SPECS
915 chipset 533mhz fsb
160gb sata intel acc. media 900
mite this be a power supply problem
all ideas and fixs welome.
 

montag451

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
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If your friend doesn't know the inside of a case, then we'll start off with software,

Run a memtest overnite, see what happens for now.
 

Nocturnal

Lifer
Jan 8, 2002
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I would run: Memtest and Hitachi's Drive Fitness test. If it can do a few passes of Memtest, and it passes the Hitachi test, I would say that it is possibly overheating or could be power problem.

I would REMOVE (completely) the battery from the unit and run the unit solely off of the AC adapter - see if that helps.
 

crown711

Diamond Member
Feb 11, 2002
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0
71
i ran memtest 12 hrs last nite ,no problems.any idea's where i go next? it looked like mem. was running my memory like it was low level memory ddr266 , but i have dual channel pc 3200 in there.
thanks
 

montag451

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,587
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Chances are that when the computer was sent back, the techs just use the default settings.

If you hike the speed of the RAM up, you may want to put the voltage up gently as well.


Anyway, that is for later, not now.

Does your friend have the speakers on at the time?
Don't suppose that it actually does boot into windows does it? (any weird music/sounds?)

Can he boot to SAFE or VGA mode?
Or even command prompt?