Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.gateway2000 (More info?)
I must have the worst Gateway computer ever made. 700 series top of the
line 1.5 years ago, 2.33ghz, and 512 ddr ram. Ever since purchasing it
the power supply has made strange grinding noises on occassion, had
three of these replaced and it still makes noises. The motherboard's
been replaced in an attempt to fix grinding noise- actually funny story
if it wasn't me (Country store said they couldn't order a CPU fan, but
told me a place to get one and have them install it, so I did this, the
techs at the other story said you usually replace the heat sink and fan
together, so they pulled off the heat sink...then we all learned that
gateway glues the pentium chips onto the heatsink. Of course, there is
no way to reinsert a pentium chip that is stuck on the pentium chip, so
I went straight back to the gateway store and they said they would have
to order a whole new motherboard- then of course, got the new
motherboard, and the USB2.0 ports were all USB1.1 ports). In
investigating the USB 2.0 port issue, they found that the hard drive was
getting ready to fail, which leads up to my question as long as I don't
get side tracked on my bad gateway experiences anymore (there are many
more stories).
When I got the new hard drive, the sound card, the creative labs audigy
was acting up a little. I do a lot of digital audio recording and midi
recording in a professional recording program called Sonar XL. So I
tried to reinstall the gateway drivers for the audigy. Well, it went
from acting funny in sonar to not working at all. Playing wave files
and such in winXP home worked, but in Sonar, no audio files would play.
Sonar uses the WDM drivers of the audigy and something is wrong with
that section of the drivers. Windows now list the outputs of this
audigy as being an Emu 10k2 soundcard and under control panel | sound it
also says the card is an Emu 10k2 card. Under the device manager, it
list it as being the creative audigy WDM which is how it should appear
everywhere, but in that sound section of control panel and in Sonar, it
says the card is an Emu 10k2 card. I have tried uninstalling the
drivers, reinstalling, updating the drivers, uninstalling those, trying
to install drivers on both the drivers CD and on the audigy CD that came
with the computer but the results are the same. I searched around and
found some 3rd party drivers for the audigy card called the KX project
drivers which are designed more for musicians such as myself, and I
intalled these drivers and everything works almost normal. However, in
Sonar, you can only use the sound card in ASIO not WDM mode, which would
be fine however, in ASIO mode for the audigy you can only record and
playback at a sampling rate set at 48k. Again this would not be a
problem, but all my previous projects are in 44.1k, so I can not play
any of my works with the KX project drivers. I converted a few songs
over to a sampling rate of 48k, and once I do that they do play fine in
Sonar, however converting takes a lot of time and overall i am losing
sound quality since I am converting only to reconvert the final projects
back to 44.1k.
Well, that is probably more details than you wanted, but I am wondering
if anyone has ever had the gateway audigy card recoginized as an Emu
10k2 card? Any ideas on things I should try? In about a year, I was
planning on getting a new computer (definately not from gateway...) and
at that time I was going to get a "pro" recording soundcard, however, if
I can't get my audigy working again, I may be forced to purchase a pro
card now (despite not really having enough money saved up for a card...)
since I can't really do any recording work right now. This is just a
wacko problem and I can't really find any information about it. Of
course, Gateway tech support isn't much help when it comes to detailed
soundcard issues, they prety much said if it plays wave files in
windows, it is fine. To me, it really seems that the WDM drivers aren't
being installed so the card is just using basic drivers to play wave
files and such in windows.
Let me know if anyone has any clues about this issue.
Thanks,
Andrew V. Romero
PS: It is really sad, I use to be a big Gateway fan. Had an almost
perfect one for like 6 years, loved it, recommended gateway to friends
and family. Seeing as I am the family comptuer expert, everyone asked
me about the computers, and I would always say that I liked Gateway.
Then I purchased this current gateway system, and wow! I really really
dislike them now. I have tried to talk them into just letting me return
the computer now (1.5 years later) and them giving me some money back,
but they won't. They just keep replacing my parts, good thing I got the
3 year warrenty. Instead of recommending Gateway, now I tell everyone
that I start talking about computers with to run far away from Gateway.
Now they are closing all the country stores, which those stores were
one of the main factors that swayed me to purchase a Gateway and not a
dell. So much for that advantage, I just would love to pay shipping to
ship my computer to gateway for service! This is really the worst
system I have ever owned, I hate it and it frustrates me to no end to
think that I paid $1800 for it. I really should report them to the
better business bureau like I have already threated to do with them in
several emails.
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