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General discussion

Help restoring OS to Gateway MX7118

by mrdazzo7 Jun 7, 2009 5:36AM PDT

I'm trying to restore XP to a friend's Gateway MX7118 and seem to have screwed myself. I didn't know there was a "recovery" process similar to my Dell, so under advisement, I deleted the partition and proceeded with a full fresh install of XP using the XP CD they had. It wasn't until it came time to enter the product key that I realized the CD version doesn't match the key on the back of the laptop, so basically now I'm stuck having deleted the recovery partition (I think) and unable to re-install windows w/o the right key.

My question is, what exactly is the recovery process for Gateways? I know on dell, I had to hit F-11 at a certain point of the boot process in order to enter PC Restore. A few more clicks and I was done.

Does anyone know how it's supposed to work for gateway? I believe there is supposed to be a recovery cd. Would that even work after I deleted that partition?

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Gateway boot

by Phil Crase Jun 7, 2009 11:51PM PDT

This will sound a bit odd but try it. Find yourself an older, (2000 to 2004} Norton antivirus CD and run it in the drive. If you are lucky, you may be able to do a restore that way. Recently I had an experience with an ACER L/T running XP, did the Norton emergency recovery trick and brought windows back. This will not work with Vista, however.

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