need help

N

northwoodsice

New Member
I am trying to revive an old gateway to put into my garage. I want to get the Win98 back to factory settings and start with a clean slate but to do this the cd drive doesnt come up in my computer and win will not just start up, it is sent to a menu to choose safe mode or sits with a black screen with a little flashing cursor. i have tried in safe mode to fix problem but have had now success. Is there any way to get back to factory settings and make this old beast work for me? Any help would be great.
Mike
 
You could slave the drive in another computer and reformat it that way. Then put it back in the gateway (check boot order like Other said) and then re-install 98SE from there. If that doesn't work you could try getting a win98SE bootdisk see if that will allow you to switch to CD rom and get it to boot. It could also be that the CD is dead, how old is the computer exactly?
 
age of computer

the computer is about 5-7 yrs old. When i put the cd in, then it just spins for a while and then goes silent. So it works. I dont know much about checking bios and things like that. I am willing to learn. I just like it when things work right and thats all i am trying to do here. Thanks for the help so far and more comments would be great.
Mike
 
Doesn't mean the dirve works if you hear it spin. The read head could be completely gone. Do you have any other CD drives that you could try sticking in the machine see if it will be read by windows?
 
didnt work

I put the other cd drive in and didnt help. I think it needs to be told to read what is in the cd drive and it is not. Is that the bios stuff?
Mike
 
enter the BIOS (usually by pressing the delete key or one of the F keys when the computer powers on) look for boot order and add the cd drive to the boot order ahead of the harddrive
 
now what

so i did the bios thing where it will read off the cd first then hardrive. Now the win98 set up menu comes up and asks if i want safe mode to strt or normal. Now what, shouldnt the cd restore disk kick in and do its thing?
Mike
 
the restore cd should run unless it is in the wrong drive (if you have 2 and set the other one to the boot order)
 
interesting

I was able to use a compaq restore cd so i wonder if the gateway cds i have are even any good. One says system cd on it and the other sayswin 98 upgrade. Would it work to use the compaq restore? by the way thanks for all the help today.
Mike
 
the system restore one might be designed to start from windows (don't know why but it is from gateway :rolleyes: )
 
you could use a windows install disc (not the upgrade) to format an install. Was the gateway restore disc scratched or dirty?
 
disc

all the discs i ahve are clan and scratch free. I bought the cpu used and all i got was the win 98 upgrade cd and the system cd.
 
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