Frustrating day

If there are any good geeks out there today that would like to take a stab at this I shure would appreciate it...
Friends PC 3 months old. Gateway DX4720-03. Decided he didn't like the norton. SUPPOSEDLY all he did was delete that and voila...no boot. BSOD. System recover disks...just sit and spin. XP pro disk...gets to "windows is starting setup"...then bsod. New sata hd...recover disks sit and spin. After alot of fiddling around, found I HAD to remove the sata hd from the pc to get recover disks to work...didn't matter what position it was in, if the sata was in the picture windows would not load. I suspect something in the bios, but what I don't know. I've been through that thing a billion times. Yea, I could throw in the towel and just use the ide...but that's not the point.I JUST put in disk 2 of the recovery, so I do not know what I am going to hatch when this is done...looks like I will know in about 15 minutes. So I am starting this thread now as I do not believe I am out of troubles yet. Any opinions? Thanks!

 

Is gateway support any help?
How did he delete Norton? Add/remove programs?
In order to boot from the CD-rom, you have to change the configuration in BIOS (setup). Watch the bootup for a message similar to: TO ENTER SETUP, PRESS DELETE NOW. The SETUP may be setup, bios, cmos, etc. The DELETE key may be F1, F2, F3, ALT, CTRL, etc. As soon as the message shows up, hit that key. You want to go to the BOOT section (that may be called something different) and change the boot order to boot from CD first (it's probably on HD now).

Hope this helps and welcome to MAJORGEEKS.

 

Get the Norton Removal Tool and save in a seperate drive for future reference.

 

Thanks fellas for steppin up to the plate. My friend did not get the extended warranty wo they will not help him. And I don't know how he removed Norton, but I suspect it wasn not through add/remove and I am positive it wasn't done using the tool. I got the system to load completely using an ide hard drive. Strangely enough, the thing comes with two sets of recovery discs. Both say they do the same thing...but one is a 2 disk set the other is a 3. I used the 2 and it worked...don't know what the 3 is yet. Here is what I have found out. I have to totally remove the sata hd from the system to load it. The sata dvd rom can stay in, but the hd had to go. Again, back to the bios. It's your basic american megatrends. Under advanced, there is a section called hd boot priority which only shows bootable hd devices found. When both ide and sata are hooked up, it sees them both...but will not let me select ide...it is not greyed out...i can select it but when I go back in it has changed to sata. When I go in to first, second, third and fourth boot devices, the ide hd does not show up as an option. Not at all. When I remove the sata drive, of course it no longer shows up, but the ide is now present. I really want to put that guys sata drive back in there and keep my 310 ide...hope you have some more ideas...if there is anything I can check let me know and I will do!