Reformatting Help

Siver

Baseband Member
Messages
25
I'm having problems with reformatting my Gateway 500SE. It comes with a Drivers CD, an Operating System CD, and two Applications CD's. I'll give you a step by step of what I am doing and what is going wrong.

Step 1 in the booklet says to insert the red Drivers CD into the CD drive. After auto run kicks in, the System Restore Kit starts to load. While it's loading this message pops up.
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This message also came up when I tried to uninstall Microsoft Word and it wouldn't let me uninstall Word. So maybe that's screwing something up? I've clicked both Close and Ignore and I it does the same thing afterwards. Once it loads I get a window tat gives me the option to reinstall Windows XP. I choose that option and then click restart and my CD ejects and I get a message saying that I need to insert the Drivers CD. If I put it back in, a little loading box comes up but nothing happens. It still says "Waiting for CD."

After I tried that a few times I would just shut my PC down with the CD in the drive. I get the screen that gives me the option to Boot from CD-ROM. I choose that and a bunch of words start filling up the screen but then it stops at A:>. Right before the A thing it says "Label Not Found." Closer to the top it says ASPI842SYS Not Installed. Then near the top it says CD Drive not found. I've tried typing Format C: in the A:> thing but it just says Bad Command. I dont know what those other things mean, but they seems like a potential problem.

One thing I should mention is that over the years a DVD Drive has been installed where the stock CD-drive original was. The CD-Drive is still installed, only it is below the DVD-Drive. So when I restart the PC with the Drivers CD in the DVD drive, it just takes me to Windows. When I do the same but only with the Drivers CD in the CD drive, I get the screen that gives me the Boot from CD-ROM option. So it doesn't seem like the CD gets read when it is in the DVD Drive on startup.

Also if I were to right click my C drive and choose Format, would this work?

If anyone could help me out that would be great. This PC is like 5-6 years old and has never been reformatted. So you can probably imagine how badly it needs it.
 
Also if I were to right click my C drive and choose Format, would this work?
No because you can't delete the operating system while it's in use. And with those cd's all you're going to get is to the repair console. It won't let you format the drive. But there is hope. Find out the brand name of the hard drive. Go to their site and get the program for making the boot formatter floppy. Make the floppy and boot the gateway from that floppy. Low level format. It will be as blank as a you can get a drive.
Make sure also that all the drives hard or optical are connected correctly to the motherboard. Make sure all the master/slave jumpers are in the right positions. Could be why it's ignoring the one drive for the other one.
Follow the instructions for reinstalling the os and you should be fine.
 
Click start > control panel > performance & maintenance > system > select hardware tab then device manager. Then expand disk drives and it should be in there
 
Either that or just look at the decal on top of the drive.

Rack time friends. Just take your time. You'll be just fine.
 
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