A few days ago one of my neighbors asked me if it was possible to install
Linux on his computer. Up until about 3 months ago he had a older computer
with win 98 installed on it. He thought that win 98 was a disaster at best,
he listened to all the advertising and thought that Windoze XP was going to
be a cure all. He then decided to order a new machine from Gateway with
Windoze XP.
After using the new machine for a couple of months he could not help but
conclude that XP was evan a bigger screw up than 98!!!
Thats about the time that he asked me about Linux. I burnt him a set of 10.0
disks and first thing in the morning he went to install them on his machine.
I had told him how to set it up for dual boot with Mandrake 10.0 and XP but
he decided aginst that, he wanted XP gone forever and did a straight ML 10.0
install.
The whole installation went very well up untill he did the reboot at the end
of the installation. At the start of the reboot the machine hung on the
startup screen with the Gateway logo and instructions to press F2 to enter
setup, it would go no further, F2 would NOT work! Thats about the time that
he called my house and explained the problem. I just knew that it had to be a
simple problem and I spent a few miniuts on the phone with him trying to walk
him through it but rebooting did not help, Rebooting and tapping F1 or F2 did
not help. I thought this was a bit odd but I still knew that it had to be a
simple problem so I drove over to help him out. The problem was as he
discribed so I reset the bios by moving the usual jumper but still no luck.
After doing a bit more trouble shooting, checking for loose connectors etc.
etc. I unpluged the Hard drive. SUCUSS I could now get into the bios. All the
settings looked OK. I had a old 500MB hard drive from a old windoze machine,
Really to small to be of practical use but OK for troubleshooting. We plugged
it in and the machine tried to boot into the old windoze 98 installation on
the replacement hard drive. OK simple enough I thought The hard drive must
have died all we need to do is get Gateway to send a new drive under
warrenty. I talked to them on the phone and explained the problem but did NOT
tell them that we had installed ML for fear of voiding the warrenty. After
going through the usual trouble shooting proceedures with a Gateway tech the
folks at Gateway also said that the hard drive was dead and said that they
would ship out a new one free of charge and that it would be about 3 days for
it to arrive.
Meanwhile my neighbors business is dependant on using a computer, all day
every day. I had a spare machine that I had just built. What better a way to
do a 24 hour burn in than to let my neighbor use it for a few days and then
just reformat the HDD and reinstall ML 10.0. All went well and he was very
happy with Mandrake
This morning he called and said that the new HDD had arrived, He had been
watching me enough to know how to install it and load ML but after installing
Mandrake again he had the same problem all over again. I asked him to bring
the machine over. After I checked things over a bit I found that he was
correct. We tried a Gateway restoration disk but that did not work. I
unpluged the hdd and finnally I was again able to at least access the bios. I
went through the bios and tried any change that I thought could possibly help
but time after time as soon as we pluged in the HDD the machine would hang on
the Gateway start up screen. I put the HDD in another machine and used a
Maxblast and a windoze boot floppy to wipe the HDD and reformat it. WE put it
back in his machine and now everything again seemed to be fine. After more
attempts we discovered that after ANYTHING but a microsux product is
installed on the HDD the Intel MOBO with Gateway BIOS can no longer see the
drive!!!!
I always thought that that Gateway was in bed with Microsux but now it
seems that they have gone to a whole new leval of BS.
Well at this point the neighbor renistalled win XP but wants to sell the
machine and wants me to build him a new machine. I do not think Gateway or
should I say Gates way have made any friends here.
If this is the kind of bull $hit game that Gateway wants to play may I
suggest that anyone that reads this start to boycott them.
Ahh well enough of a rant for now.
Marc
--
Composed on a 100% Microsoft and
windows free computer using
Mandrake Linux 10.0
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
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