I was given a Gateway Essential 566 for my daughter. I used a restoration disc I owned to clear out the hard drive. I downloaded a boot disk. I put it in the computer and all I get is a black screen and a white flashing bar but nothing else. HHHHEEELLLPPPP!!!

Hey Original Bat,

Welcome to PCHF. We have a pretty great team of techs here, and I am sure we can help you figure out what's going on.

First of all, before you wiped the HDD, do you know if the PC was fully functional?

Where did you get the bootdisk, and which one did you download?

What was the old restore disk for, what type of PC?

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Yes it was semi functional ( some use was possible). I downloaded the bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com. The disks were from another Gateway that I have that is running great. Since my last post I tried with the boot disk and haven't been able to do anything.

Hi Original Bat,

I want to start out by telling you that it is wonderful of you to be trying to fix up this computer for your daughter. Just for future reference, you should never use a restore disk from another computer on any other. A restore disk is designed to look for the exact PC with the exact configuration for that model. It then takes it back to the original factory settings.

Here is what you would want to do in the future. Boot up the PC with a bootdisk appropriate for the OS you either are using or are going to install. Use the FDISK utility to delete, and then create and activate the partitions that you want to use.
Reboot the PC with the same bootdisk, and use the Format utility to format the partition that you will be installing your OS on. Then install the operating system.

Let's see what is possible. When you first start to boot up the PC, can you get into BIOS? Do you get any type of response at all? Can you loacate, and remove the CMOS battery overnight? Then see if you get a response.

If you like, and can get any type of response from the BIOS, I can attempt to get you a recovery CD for the 566 from Gateway. But in that case, you will need to PM me with the serial # from the machine, they won't talk to me unless I have that.

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Hi thanks for helping. Yes, I can get into BIOS and I can remove the CMOS battery. I emailed Gateway and they informed me that they couldn't get me a 566 recovery disk. I gave them the serial number also. As far as being wonderful for my daughter, I consider it my duty to give them every advantage in education I can. I used FDISK to partition the hard drive and formatted the c drive but other than that no response.

I have another computer (even older); could I replace the CMOS battery in the Gateway with the one in the older computer?