Gateway Rebuild...

Brothers old gateway... 550 256RAM upgraded to larger hard drive... but he dont have his orginal restore disks..

Orginally was WIN98 SE decided not fast enough for XP so we kept at 98
loading the generic 98 CD gives me run time error, with BOTH the old HD and brand spanking new one.. Did gateway put up a brick wall around the bios? this CD works fine loading on other computers.. only not on this %&)(*()*_ gateway.. tech support there is a joke.. they trying to make a buck and nothing doing..

Any one have any idea how to load the OS? Or whats causing the run time error? IT says run time error 00600 integar is less than 0

Sorry taking a hammer to the MB is out of question he cant afford that... trying to help him have a half way decent one to play poker on.

thanks!!

 

your out of luck. you need the restore cd's. gateway made sure of that-they will cost a pretty penny too. I have a p4 system sitting in my closet that my aunt gave me because her hardrive crashed and she lost her restore cd's.
basically I'll have to end up buying a new m/b, so I can install a new o/s.

good luck.

 

couldn't you try taking your h/d out, putting it in another computer, loading os, removing and replace back in your comp.? of course i don't know what it'll do about your bios, and drivers? anyway, just a thought. - sos

 

that would not be good

 

actually I should have said:

go ahead and try it

but seriously, I would want to know if it works or not, because in my case
it would mean having a o/s installed from amd system, to one on a p4 system, different m/b ( of course ), different pci cards, all with a gateway bios,(will this bios check for their o/s?,because it sure as hell knows the restore cds when it sees it) I don't know, I hope it does because it would save me some money. Maybe later I'll check it out and see, prolly not soon tho' because I just got my rig up and running (just built it) and don't want to mess with it right now because I am tired (ie lazy)

 

Installing the OS on the hard drive on one PC then putting on another can work, BUT you will have alot of extra stuff stored in the registry and and other files from the other motherboard and devices. It is not the best way to do things but if it becomes your only option you might as well try. Hope it works.

 

lol, i am actually an electronic technician in real life (or was). i mean i don't normally think the same as others (as i like to tinker), and if i were in that situation, i would have tried it. i didn't think it'd be easy (with all the drivers etc.), and i only said bios as i wasn't sure. that's why i'm here at majorgeeks (to learn also)!!