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View Full Version : Built In Errors?

kd7aze
03-01-06, 11:28 AM
Purchased a Gateway laptop computer to use for browsing, etc. Fooled around with a Linux install, and went back to try and install Windows. Here's where my question lies:

Windows 2000, Windows XP Pro and Home all failed at some point in the install, every time due to a stop error regarding problems with the system RAM. However, when I used the restore disc, XP Home went on the machine (and runs) without a hitch.

Have you ever heard of a problem like this before, is this an intentional flaw, and how do you get around it?
matttaylor
03-01-06, 11:47 AM
Is this an Intel based lappy? if so you have to disable speedstepping in the bios in order to do installs of any OS other than restore disks.
kd7aze
03-01-06, 10:26 PM
The model of the gateway is M3215. The processor is intel based, but it's a Celeron M, so there is no speed-stepping, nor any options in the bios related to the processor. Said bios is also shockingly sparse in options.
matttaylor
03-02-06, 10:07 AM
Well Gateway's site is shockingly no help:

http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/Gateway/M280/1008547faq11.shtml

If you don't have a boot tool CD yet, you should download Ultimate Boot CD and use it to test your ram, HDD, and cpu/motherboard. I have seen laptops from various mfg's come out of the box with problems. You may have a problem and not know it.
sunrunner20
03-03-06, 05:25 PM
The model of the gateway is M3215. The processor is intel based, but it's a Celeron M, so there is no speed-stepping, nor any options in the bios related to the processor. Said bios is also shockingly sparse in options.

Um, M is for mobile which means SPEED STEPPING...
ozzlo
03-03-06, 06:17 PM
actually the pentium-m's little brother the celeron-m has speed step permanentally disabled along with the cache... intel was looking at the peformance of the celeron-m and even with half the l2 disabled it was still doing a pretty good job keeping up with equally clocked pentium-m's... so Intel came up with the idea to get rid of speed step on the celeron-m's in order to create a larger peformance gap...

that way intel keeps people from buying the budget processors all the time which means more profits for intel...


note this is not to be confused with the mobile celeron-D... the celeron-m will own a celeron-D any day...
matttaylor
03-03-06, 09:07 PM
Any updates or hardware problems found?