I really am stuck bad!

[markjs]

I already posted, but I have a real urgency here. This Gateway (newer Vista one) laptop will NOT boot from any source but its hard drive (and believe me I know my way around a BIOS). When you boot from the hard drive it simply blue screens, after it shows you the "Vista progress bar". It also blue screens if you try to use the recovery partition.

When I remove the hard drive it comes up with an "intel boot manager" that tells me check the cable and that there is no OS.

It does that no matter how I try to boot, and I have tried the internal DVD burner, which she assures me works, an external CD, and a flash drive set up with XP and still nothing. I have also tried it with each 512mb stick of memory singly and nothing changed.

I do note that when I try to boot from the DVD drive, it seems to try for a long time but then just goes to the hard drive with no message.

I have seen a CRAPLOAD of problems, but this one is new to me.....PLEASE, any help is appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[amdhunter]

Can you set the laptop to Native IDE mode and give it a shot? It might be that AHCI mode is screwing things up a bit (especially if the stop error says inaccessible boot device or something.) The setting might say something like Native SATA or something similar.

Edited cuz you already removed the drive.

 

[markjs]

No the stupid BIOS just about allows nothing but setting time and date and boot sequence. I'll look again, but I am pretty sure that is about it. Thanks though, no matter what I'll let you guys know how it works out!

 

[markjs]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com...29458_c665912db4_o.jpg That is the advanced screen. I have tried everything I can think of!

 

[IlllI]

try a new hard drive

 

[markjs]

If I had a spare SATA laptop drive! Besides, what does that have to do with the fact it cannot boot from anything but the hard drive whether the hard drive is in or out of it?

Something stupid just occurred to me, at least it seems dumb to me....

All of my external CD/DVD ROMs I currently have are IDE to USB. Could it be that it will only recognize a SATA to IDE?

 

[IlllI]

Originally posted by: markjs
what does that have to do with the fact it cannot boot from anything but the hard drive

"When you boot from the hard drive it simply blue screens"

doesn't sound like it can boot from anything actually

 

[markjs]

What I was trying to say is that the only thing it even seems to try to do is boot from the hard drive and for some reason that blue screens....

 

[markjs]

http://farm4.static.flickr.com...1100953_3bb30fe537.jpg

That is the boot screen options....