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Question

Gateway laptop will not finish starting up.

by Jul 5, 2018 4:41PM PDT

Hi All, thanks for reading...
This is my daughters laptop, so I will tell you what I know.
Gateway NV56R06u Windows 7 OS, 4 GB Ram, 500GB HD.
She stopped using it about a year ago because she said it needed a new charger.
I got a new replacement charger a few days ago, plugged it turned it on.

While waiting for it to 'warm up' I saw the screen and the windows logo start up. But then it went to a "CMD style " black & white screen that recommended Windows to do the
"Startup Repair". I trusted that it needed it since it had been off for so long.
After about 10 hours of scanning, I clicked cancel. I read somewhere that it shouldn't take that long. Maybe 2 hours max. It then said scan complete, there were no issues and a log would be saved. Then I thought it would boot up from there but then it said " Windows loading files". A few seconds later, I got this error message.

Status: 0xc00000e9 - An unexpected i/o error has occurred".

I can not get into safe mode (hitting F8, F7,F9,F10,F12, etc) . I CAN get into the BIOS. It shows the HDD0: Toshiba MK5059GSXP.
The only strange thing I saw in BIOS is that it said FROZEN in the hard drive password area. I cleared it. Does that mean anything?

So today, I turned it on and the "0xc00000e9 - An unexpected i/o error has occurred" is not showing up any more..
Now I get a screen that says basically " PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable.
PXE-M0F: Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM.
No bootable device--insert boot disk and press any key".

First let me say that she does not have the OS physical disc. Her Laptop did not come with it (its about 5 yrs old), and she never requested a copy of the OS files. Laptops these days dont come with the discs anymore.
I also unscrewed the back cover to see if the HD was physically detached. It appeared fine.
Please advise. I'd really appreciate it.
Thank you.
1 ) WOuld clearing the Frozen HDD Password in BIOS have fixed the issue, or was it worse that I cleared it because now its saying No bootable device which coincidentally happened after I cleared the frozen PW? One thing have to do with the other?

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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Answer
Error 0xc00000e9 is usually caused by a failing or a bad hdd
by Forum moderator Jul 5, 2018 4:55PM PDT

So while not having restore media is a problem I have to start with a few questions.

1. Is it worth paying for a new HDD?
2. Is it worth paying for restore media?

Item 2 is a shame they didn't take the free at the time W10 upgrade since we can get the OS install files for free. For W7, you will get sent to the laptop maker.

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Switched the HD from another
by azyardies Jul 5, 2018 9:28PM PDT

Thanks for your answer. I switched the hd from a Lenovo laptop that I had laying around (has a non- working screen), & placed it in my daughter's Gateway.

Ironically it has windows 7 installed, and is the same size (500gb) as the faulty HD. It booted up so I that's good. However, in device manager, under "other devices", there are 6 yellow triangles on these: base system device, base system device, Ethernet controller, network controller, pci simple communications controller, & sm bus controller. In properties in all 6 of them, it shows code 28.
I haven't done anything yet. Should I try updating, uninstalling, scan for hardware changes, etc? One by one? I'd like to try the least risky method first, just in case. I can't connect to the internet ( guessing cause network controller has yellow triangles )...?
Thanks again

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Re: switched HD
by Kees_B Forum moderator Jul 6, 2018 12:36AM PDT

That doesn't work, as you see.

Get your Windows 7 or 10 install disc or stick (free to make), and do a clean install. Windows 7 might accept the license code from the old one (on the certificate of authenticity). Then install all drivers for that OS from the Gateway site, and you're up and running assuming there is no hardware problem.

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Nope again.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jul 6, 2018 10:12AM PDT

Windows with only a few rare exceptions never moves from PC to PC. Also it's a great way to blow up a working install. That is, we have seen folk swap a drive from a working PC, they discover it fails, they move the drive back to the first machine and now they have two PCs to repair.

But since you have a donor HDD you could install Linux and get use from the PC since Firefox is Firefox on any OS on a PC.

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