I don't know what's wrong :( Hard Drive? Motherboard?

monicaet

New Member
I have a Gateway 4542GP. I had my laptop plugged in without the battery into a surge protector when the power went out. I am possibly thinking my surge prot. is old because I couldn't get my computer to turn on for a bit.

Long story short - I got it to turn on. It loads okay with the battery and the power cord locked in. However, my computer never starts normally. Twice I got it to start normally (after system back up).

I gave up and left it alone. I turned it on a couple months later (today!) and found that I could only gain access in "safe mode". I took off my old files and did a complete system restore (destructive) with my system restore disks. However it didn't work. It said it was finished and tried to load again. After the "Microsoft" sign comes up, a blue screen flashes and then it says, "I'm sorry but Microsoft did not start correctly".

I am ready to order another hard drive off line. But then I thought that may not be the problem? Any suggestions? Please?

(Would I be able to start up to Safe Mode if my motherboard was shot?)
 
Usually if you can boot in safe mode it points to a driver problem. That could be a failing hard drive. You can rule other things out by running things like memtest. Scandisk/chkdsk or some other hard drive test might tell you there's a problem as well.
 
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