Need help please..

Hello everyone,

I am looking for some help please. I bought a Gateway about a month ago and for a week have been having nothing but problems.

It all first started when I rebooted one day and got a message that said something like "A problem has been detected with your hard drive, please refer to your computer manual" well, after getting this I hit enter it booted up after sitting at the Loading WinXP screen for about 2 minutes.. After that all my programs would lock up upon bootup..

So I went ahead and defrag'd and ran a completed error check and that message about detecting a hard drive problem went away..

Now, when I boot up it takes a LONG time at the WinXP screen, about 2 mins, and it seems to work OK, problem it every now and then it will lock up, and sometimes just shutdown in the middle of everything..

When booting up I hear a load spin up noise, it sounds like the hard drive or a CPU fan or PS fan..

Does anyone have any ideas? Its under a 3 year warranty so I could just take it in but they quote a 7 days turnaround which I don't want to wait for unless I absolutely have too.

Thanks in advance.

Jeff

IMO they can't fix it. The problem with lockups won't occur regularly in the shop often enough for them to locate the source, they'll lie and tell you it didn't exist, there was a software problem, they reloaded your drive, etc.

That is unless something really rare happens and the problem is so obvious even someone with little common sense can see it.

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