laptop fell into water

[T2urtle]

I have a cx2610 gateway laptop. It flooded waste deep here in chicago a couple of weeks ago and well when moving stuff upstairs the laptop took a quick dip. it didn't fully go in or anything. quickly took it up and let it dry. We waited a week till startup.

I thought it was dead. But to my surprise it started up. first time it started up everything went fine. 10 mins into it it froze. I rebooted and then it stated no hard-drive installed. So i go try to install XP with a disc.

It states the ram is working after being scanned but it wont boot from hard-drive. So now i'm thinking i should just replace the hard-drive but i have this fear that maybe the motherboard or something else is bad. I dont want to buy a hard-drive and only to have something else not work.

What do you guys think of my situation?

i need a "80 GB HDD (5400 RPM) SATA" so i'm assuming that will run me about 50-100$


what are the chances of more things messing up, the laptop on its own wont get pass the gateway screen, when XP install disc installed it runs it into the blue screen and searches everything the right way and then stops saying NO HD found. but it does a RAM test. so it seems as most of the things are working

 

[Seggybop]

Electronic parts generally can survive momentary submersion in water as long as they aren't powered on at the time. Mechanical parts like hard drives on the other hand will very easily get screwed up. Since it seems to be working now, it's probably OK except for the hard drive and perhaps CD drive and fans. It's definitely worth trying to replace the hard drive.

 

[T2urtle]

yea i would say only 1/2 the bottom part fell into it but only for a couple of seconds max, and after that it sat on the table for a week.

the dvd/cd drive works as it loads the XP boot up disk, i think i heard the fans run. screen is working. my main concern was the motherboard, USB plugs, its a tablet PC, so i'm wondering if anything of that is messed up.

the battery charges not a problem. I'll probaly grab a hard-drive at my local store.


another question just came to mind. since its a tablet computer, so i need XP tablet edition? i dont think it ever came with a cd. since its not my laptop i would have to ask about it.

 

[Seggybop]

If they didn't give you a CD, the reinstall files were probably saved in c:\i386. Since you can't access the hard drive anymore that won't be very helpful. You'll have to get the setup files somewhere else and then use the original CD key.

 

[T2urtle]

i picked up a new harddrive, installed it but unable to work.

i didn't get the tablet XP edition, i just had a normal XP home install disc, but even with that it doesn't detect the HD.

XP install screen shows up and goes thru all that, then it states " no hard-drive was found", now in BIOS screen the hard-drive shows up. i dont think its OS disc, what else can be done, replaced or looked at?

 

[Roguestar]

Use a copy of XP with SP2 on the disc, it could just be lacking SATA drivers and refusing to see the drive. If it shows up in the BIOS it's probably just that you need an XP SP2 disc.

 

[T2urtle]

anyone happen to know that one program that i can use to make a bootable XP disc with Sp2 installed and let me pre-install certain drivers as well? someone on this forum gave me a link to the program about a year ago when i wanted to install my 500gb hard-drive and not partition it for my dell and it worked flawlessly. but that disc had all my dell drivers linked to it.

 

[lxskllr]

Nlite?

 

[T2urtle]

yes sir! thank you.

i made a XP disc with sp3, since it was easier to find. still same results.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

SP3 needs SP 1 or 2, so if that XP disk was the original release, nlite another install disk with SP1 or 2, and then 3.

 

[T2urtle]

i've chatted with gateway tech support and they told me to run their HD scanner or something along that lines of that known as GWscan.

i ran it, it detected all 120gb of the SATA drive. i "wrote zeros" for everything, i guess thats formating the drive.

the stated to me that the motherboard has failed.


i just ran xp Sp2 and same results.

 

[Roguestar]

Well if it's able to detect and write to the drive then there can't be much else wrong with it...

By the way I think the program you asked about earlier is called Slipsteam.

 

[T2urtle]

well nlite slipsteam sp2 since i have the orginal Xp. i know this was done correctly because i made a disc and even used my xp2 disc i made for my dell.

i simply dont understand it. why the hard-drive is readable thru everything BUT xp.

 

[T2urtle]

update... so i borrowed a friend's copy of vista, and the it works...

but i picked up a replacement already and i have to give back the vista.

how much do you think these tablets go for?

1.7ghz intel, 512mb, dvd-rw burner, obviously tablet version. overall mint. My friend wanted to buy it off me, i think brand new i paid $1000 roughly for it. i'm thinking $250 is what the going offer is but i told him i would give him $50 off market price.

 

[bdoople]

Yeah the issue is the SATA drivers not being in the XP installation disc (as you probably found out when Vista worked.) You can call Gateway and order the Recovery Discs from them for a charge, usually $15-$20 or so. I deal with this a lot at work.