Hello Laptoppers,
I am baffled by what happened to my Gateway 2100. In preparation
for loading Linux Red Hat 5.2 I unplugged my WIN95-loaded HD (1.2GB) and
substituted a brand new formatted HD (2.1GB). This was to only be a trial
to see if I could access my CD with the Linux OS disk in. It looked fine,
and seemed to start loading before I realized it would start on its own. I
stopped the installation and powered down. Switched back to my WIN HD and
found it booted up fine. BUT, after using an app and attempting to power
down there was an error message saying that Windows Explorer had caused a
fault and would be closed down (I had not been using explorer). It never
closed down and I continued to get this same message. After cliking power
off and then powering up again there was a menu advising protected mode
boot-up. This was taken but was followed by message stating there was
damaged files in Registry. A call to Gateway tech support resulted in a
decision that HD had to be reformatted and Windows reinstalled.
Question: Is there any way that anything that resulted from the
session with the 2.1HD and the Red Hat CD could have been carried over to
the 1.2HD even if the machine was completely powered down to swap back
from the Red Hat HD to the WIN HD? (My BIOS seems to automatically detect
the details of the HD when I do the switch.)
Thanks for any help or ideas about what to make of this revolting
development.
Lou Mulieri
Hinesburg, VT
