[bensonsbird]

i was recently given a gateway solo 5300 but with no hard drive present. i have put a new hard drive in it but have no idea whatsoever as to what to do next.

do i have to do anything to the bios screen?

i need step by very simple step instructions on what i need to do in order to make this laptop useable, as it is going to be a christmas present for my eldest son (fingers crossed)

Please help. One very computer clueless extremely anxious mum.

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The only thing you might do in the BIOS/CMOS Setup is to: 1) Check to make sure the hard drive is being detected, 2) if the option is available, reset everything back to Factory Defaults, and 3) set it so that the laptop will attempt to boot from a CD/DVD before the hard drive. That's it, save your changes and exit.

Now boot it from a Windows XP CD and follow the onscreen instructions.

--

Warning: This laptop will be *-s-l-o-w-*. It's running an ancient Pentium III and maxes out at 512MB of RAM. The video is also severely lacking, (max 16-bit color and 8MB of RAM). See the following Gateway page for more info:

http://support.gateway.com/s/manlib/Notebooks/Solo5300/8508144/8508144.htm

[SpywareDr]

The only thing you might do in the BIOS/CMOS Setup is to: 1) Check to make sure the hard drive is being detected, 2) if the option is available, reset everything back to Factory Defaults, and 3) set it so that the laptop will attempt to boot from a CD/DVD before the hard drive. That's it, save your changes and exit.

Now boot it from a Windows XP CD and follow the onscreen instructions.

--

Warning: This laptop will be *-s-l-o-w-*. It's running an ancient Pentium III and maxes out at 512MB of RAM. The video is also severely lacking, (max 16-bit color and 8MB of RAM). See the following Gateway page for more info:

http://support.gateway.com/s/manlib/Notebooks/Solo5300/8508144/8508144.htm