tdaily1974
New Member
MY BOX
Gateway DX4300-11 Desktop PC
AMD Phenom II X4 805 processor. 1TB hard drive and ATI Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics 8GB of DDR2
My story:
bought this box 4/15/2010, came a week later. worked out of box no problems. a month and a half later the hard drive crapped out. it takes me a while to take action on things so about a month later sent hard drive back and received a new 1. no operating system on it this time. i thought - this isn't a problem. i purchased a 3 license win7 license/cd and have used it for my other 2 computers. i'll install windows and use the product key on the gateway box, it's a valid code right. worked no problem for 2 days before it starts telling me that the key is invalid. had to call a # where i entered 9 6-digit codes to an automated call system which later spat back at me another group of digits. it worked & i was validated. win7 crashed a wk later.
reinstalled win 7, worked for 2 days and same problem, invalid key. went thru the automated call system again, but this time they tell me no good. tried customer care for gateway and microsoft. they both looped me back and forth to each other for 4 hours on my vacation day. the most i ever became frustrated with customer service. finally got an answer that apparently i was supposed to create a backup disc before the first hard drive failed and since i didn't they want me to purchase the backup disc for a 4 month old computer. wtf!!. apparently their special recovery disc is the only thing that works with the product key that came with the box. after arguing that i'm not spending more money for a product i spent 700 bucks for only 4 months ago, they threw warranty info of 30 days this and 90 day that in my face. they offered me 1 other option, pay for shipping to send my box back and their tech guys will reinstall windows. this is still costing me money one way or another, and i refuse to use my last license on a brand new product that has its own product key that i purchased.
finally a question.
when reinstalling win7 the second time i noticed another partition on the drive about 700mb or so. could the restore be placed on this partition. i know when you buy some computers they have a special partition set aside for this. also if this is the case, how in the bajezers do you get into the bios on this system. i've restarted and hit every F# key available and i cannot find the bios for this machine, or at least i can't find any bios that i'm familiar with. I'm attempting to go to the bios and see if i can change boot drives but can't figure out how to get to bios to achieve this for the life of me.
Please any help will be appreicated and thanks in advance for any assistance.
Gateway DX4300-11 Desktop PC
AMD Phenom II X4 805 processor. 1TB hard drive and ATI Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics 8GB of DDR2
My story:
bought this box 4/15/2010, came a week later. worked out of box no problems. a month and a half later the hard drive crapped out. it takes me a while to take action on things so about a month later sent hard drive back and received a new 1. no operating system on it this time. i thought - this isn't a problem. i purchased a 3 license win7 license/cd and have used it for my other 2 computers. i'll install windows and use the product key on the gateway box, it's a valid code right. worked no problem for 2 days before it starts telling me that the key is invalid. had to call a # where i entered 9 6-digit codes to an automated call system which later spat back at me another group of digits. it worked & i was validated. win7 crashed a wk later.
reinstalled win 7, worked for 2 days and same problem, invalid key. went thru the automated call system again, but this time they tell me no good. tried customer care for gateway and microsoft. they both looped me back and forth to each other for 4 hours on my vacation day. the most i ever became frustrated with customer service. finally got an answer that apparently i was supposed to create a backup disc before the first hard drive failed and since i didn't they want me to purchase the backup disc for a 4 month old computer. wtf!!. apparently their special recovery disc is the only thing that works with the product key that came with the box. after arguing that i'm not spending more money for a product i spent 700 bucks for only 4 months ago, they threw warranty info of 30 days this and 90 day that in my face. they offered me 1 other option, pay for shipping to send my box back and their tech guys will reinstall windows. this is still costing me money one way or another, and i refuse to use my last license on a brand new product that has its own product key that i purchased.
finally a question.
when reinstalling win7 the second time i noticed another partition on the drive about 700mb or so. could the restore be placed on this partition. i know when you buy some computers they have a special partition set aside for this. also if this is the case, how in the bajezers do you get into the bios on this system. i've restarted and hit every F# key available and i cannot find the bios for this machine, or at least i can't find any bios that i'm familiar with. I'm attempting to go to the bios and see if i can change boot drives but can't figure out how to get to bios to achieve this for the life of me.
Please any help will be appreicated and thanks in advance for any assistance.
