Laptop wont boot without hitting F10

Hey all,
I'm using a Gateway FX Intel core 2 duo 2.26ghz 4gb ram running windows 7 Ultimate. It's always been a great laptop and survived a couple trips to Iraq.

When I power on the computer loads to the boot screen and just sits there and when I press F10 it thinks about it for a few minutes then loads to the Bios screen. I dont do anything and just save and exit and it will load all the way to my login screen and act like normal....until I shutdown again. I'm using it right now in fact. Is this a battery issue? or software related? Or something else entirely?

I changed my boot order but that didnt help and I also put the windows 7 CD in and that didn't work either.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

Do you get any messages on the screen?
Try running Memtest86+ to test your memory.
MEMTEST86+
You will have to burn the downloaded file as an iso image and change the boot order back to booting off the cd first.

 

I would check to see if everything is still seated tightly, remove the ram, clean the gold contacts with either an eraser or alcohol wipe, reseat them carefully but firmly into the slots so that the clips securely click in place. Remove the hard drive and blow out the bay it sits in, reseat it firmly making sure that the caddy is secured.
If the issue persists try one ram module at a time in alternative slots, it may or may not be a bad ram module, or it could be that with it traveling quite alot it may have jolted the HDD or ram out of its slots hence the reason of why i ask you to remove and reseat both.

iain.t :major

 

Ok, I ran Memtest and it passed 100%. I also removed, cleaned and reseated my hardrive and the RAM. No luck so far. I also get no error messages or warning.

Even when the Boot is set to load from disk I have to go into BIOS and save and exit before it will boot using the disk or without the disk all the way to the log-on screen. It's like it gets hung up at the splash screen or whatever you call it and dosen't know what to do even though the BIOS shows all my settings correct when I go to it.

 

Do you get the same symptoms when you boot into safemode (f8 on boot).

iain.t :major

 

Yes, I did a safe boot and it acted the same. I started by going to MSconfig and did a safe minimal boot from there and restarted. It got hung up at the same spot.

 

could it be my CMOS battery or something like that?

 

Hi,

Give the exact model number from the tag on the bottom so we can see if a BIOS update might address this issue.

One other thing you might try is that there were some Toshiba laptops that would hang on the Splash screen when the DVD drive died. I've never seen that for Gateway and yours seems to boot eventually but it might be worth to rule out two devices.

You could remove the DVDROM then reboot and see if it still hangs. I would reboot twice--first time to allow BIOS to see change and second time to see if now boots properly. Then do the same thing but with the DVDROM in place remove the HD and try booting from a CD/DVD see if it hangs. This would eliminate a detection problem with these two devices.

 

Model number is P-7811FX. Will try to figure out the DVD drive removal to give that idea a shot.

 

I only see one BIOS note and that says you should be using 9C.23.00 or below. There was one update 9C.25.00 that was bad. If you aren't using the 25 version then I don't see any reason to change BIOS versions.

Usually DVDROM are just held in place by one screw from the bottom of the notebook and then slide out.

 

That fixed it... Woot!

I removed the one screw from the bottom, slid the DVD Drive out and started it back up again. Worked like a dream. I shut it down and did it 2 more times with no problems. Then I cleaned the connection and reinstalled the drive. It started with no problems. I shut it down and started it a few times and it's working like it should be again.

Thanks guys for helping me figure this out.

 

Great!!!
Thanks for the feedback. Pleased that the issue is now resolved. Any more issues you run into create a new thread and some one will jump in to try and assist in putting it right.

iain.t :major