[Teresa Tanner]

hey i have a quick question. I keep on getting a black screen saying smat hardware failture predicted. then it says to press f1 to continue and the past 2 weeks its been loading windows fine and running fine!!. Then tonight it try to load windows then turns off and i guess that black screen again. my laptop is only 6 months old but i have no warrenty. its a gate way.

I have the windows xp boot disk, do u think it is repairable? or do u think i need a new hardrive? is this a symtom of a gone harddrive?

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You can go to the manufactuer of your disk drive and use their online diagnostic tool to check the drive. At that will tell you yea or nay and we can go from there.

Ron

[Major Payne]

You can go to the manufactuer of your disk drive and use their online diagnostic tool to check the drive. At that will tell you yea or nay and we can go from there.

Ron

[Teresa Tanner]

any way i can cheak who the manfuactuer is under set up on the computer?? or look on the harddrive or something?? or is there any websites i can look its a gateway mx6441

[piper]

Is this the same hard drive you posted about in this thread from February 22 and this thread from just a few minutes ago?

Did the reinstall not work (from the Feb 22 post)?

[Major Payne]

Hey Linda:

You got it covered already from those other posts. Only got email about this one. Backing out and good luck.

Ron

[Teresa Tanner]

it did work for a while i did a chk disk on the c asnd d drive. and fixboot

and my computer was running fine too after i did it

but its just so weird because how can a hardrive just die from a 6 month old laptop..

[piper]

In your February post, you indicated the laptop was a 2005 Gateway MX6441. When you say "6-month old" laptop, do you mean you've only had it 6 months, and perhaps you bought it used? If you did purchase it new, was your warranty 90 days or a full year?

It is unusual for a hard drive to fail after only 6 months, but I have seen it happen.

In the February post, I provided a link to Gateway's hard drive diagnostic utility. Did you download and run that diagnostic to test the drive for errors? If so, did it report errors? If you didn't run it, please do that at your earliest convenience. You should be able to confirm/deny hard drive problems.

Replacing the hard drive in this laptop doesn't appear difficult at all. See this Gateway link that explains (with pictures) how to replace the drive.

You said you ran Chkdsk on C:\ and D:\. In the February post, we discussed backing up your data and doing a system recovery. Did you do that? If so, and the drive is again giving you the imminent failure alert, then I'd say the drive is failing and you should immediately backup your data (if you didn't already).

Because your system is a Gateway, you need to review the links I provided about creating a Recovery Disk and also this Gateway link that explains how to perform a system recovery to a new/blank hard drive.

As I stated in the February post, it is vitally important that you create a Recovery disk before your hard drive fails, because Gateway stores the OS files on a partition of the hard drive.

[Teresa Tanner]

yes it is the same computer. my friend bought it brand new 6 months ago then sold it to be after 4 months and iv been using it fine for 2 1/2 months. the warrenty doesnt go for me i guess what gateway told her.

i tryed the diognistic tool but i got so confused on how to do i gave up. and now since i get get into windows i cant download it and do it

i backed up some of my data like pics but i did miss acouple of things. is there anyting i can do to get windows to boot again!?!? do you think if i did chkdsk again and fix boot and fix mbr it might do it once again!? i mean the last probablem i had i had that blue window pop up and say unmountable boot volumn. i really just want to try to get it too boot one more time

also are hardrives expensive!?

and see what it is doing now is trying to boot then i get the black s.m.a.r.t failure predicted screen and it trys to boot after i press f1 and then it says windows xp.. then restarts and i get the black screen again. i mean do u think if my harddrive was gone it wouldnt even start??

i did a recovery partition on drive d... but i dont think i did it right. i mean i have a windows xp disk i can load on my new harddrive once i get it its pirated but i have a valid product key. i also have that windows boot disk i use for repair that i noted above i use to do chkdsk

[piper]

You can download that utility on whatever computer you're currently using to access the internet. The diagnostic utility runs from a DOS prompt during boot up. Please refer to this Gateway link I provided in the February thread, Post #8. Click "How to Install". You download the file, execute it to create a bootable floppy or CD. Then power up the computer with the media in the drive - hopefully the computer will boot to the floppy or CD. Then the diagnostics should run.

At this point, though, your best bet to retrieve the data is probably to take it out of the laptop, put it in a USB Laptop HDD Enclosure, attach it to another computer and see if you can browse the drive. If the drive isn't totally gone, it should show up in My Computer.

[Whiskeyman]

If that PC was under warranty for her then I would have your friend contact Gateway for an RMA. She didn't need to tell Gateway that she sold it.