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Laptop booting issue

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Hombner

Technical User
Dec 26, 2003
12
US
my cousin gave me this 200 mhz laptop and when i boot it does everything great and i also see the windows me screen, but then i see a screen that asks me to go into safe or normal mode. regardless of what i choose the comp then proceeds and then freezes. i tried to resolve this issue by intalling 95 on it, by changing the boot sequence to check the cdrom first, but nothing happens. Can anyone tell me what should i do to resolve this issue
 
Personally ME sucks and is probably not ideal for a 200mhz laptop anyway (it is quite memory hungry and it needs 64mb minimum) I would recommend 98SE but before you proceed you need to know which OS is supported by the laptop manufacturer, if you havn't got the original restore disk or mainboard drivers then you are going to need to download them from the manufactures website, and they will probably only support 95 or if you are lucky 98.
Sounds to me you need to start with a windows boot disk (W98 if supported) then format at the "a" prompt type:
format c:/u
Once formatted type: setup
But as I said you may need other drivers once windows has installed ie: sound, graphics, modem

Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.
 
i tried to do what u said, but my comp always gives me the message that it cant find c drive or that i have invalid configuration. this is not allowing me install any of the drivers how can i make it recognize it.
 
if it helps any its a gateway solo 2500
 
Try booting with a win98 boot floppy disk and run fdisk. Delete primary DOS partition and then recreate it. If fdisk wont work then HDD might be bad.
 
After you recreate the primary DOS partition you will have to format it of course.
 
I just restored a Solo 2500. It needed a new CPU - PII 266. It originally came with Win 95. I reformatted the Hard Drive and installed Win 98. It only has 32 meg (stock) memory. I found a source for parts (private, not EBay). I upgraded to 64 meg mem ($20.00) in order to run anything at all! BY the way, EBay has all kinds of parts listed for the Solo 2500. Currently I'm bidding on a battery. Gateway has all the drivers (download) after you format. If you need instructions on how to get it apart, let me know and I'll give you my e-mail address.
 
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