moze229
Member
- Messages
- 35
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
Scenario:
I have a Gateway laptop that I'm going to sell because I don't use it anymore. It originally came with Windows 8 (no install media), but I had since accepted the 8.1 upgrade whenever it became available. So to prepare for the sale, I chose to reset the PC to the factory Gateway settings from the recovery partition (went without a hitch) and being the nice guy that I am, went ahead and did all the updates, and attempted upgrading to 8.1 again. Nothing but problems. Several times I got messages that it couldn't install properly, needed to restart, or some other problem. I finally got into 8.1, continued to do the updates for 8.1 and now I'm stuck in an endless "Automatic Repair" boot. No matter what I do, I can't get it to pass this portion of the boot.
I did, at one time, setup a Live boot (USB) of Linux with this laptop, but never messed with any of the drive partitions or anything. Only used the portions of the OS that would operate via the USB (was just trying a particular distribution.) When I go into my BIOS, one of the bootup options is "ubuntu", which I assume is being picked up from one of the partitions on the HDD. How this got there I have no idea. There must have been something that the live boot did at one point or another (or I did accidentally) to rename one of the partitions. However, diskpart doesn't report this label, GParted (in Linux) doesn't report this label, and I can't figure out how it got there. At this point I'm assuming that this (not the label, but something else) is possibly causing my issues.
At this point I feel that I need to just wipe the drive completely off and start over. But I can't do that because Gateway didn't provide any install media. I have 8.1 media that I purchased for another machine, but I obviously can't use that.
Is there a way to extract an installable tool from what I have available to me? I would also need to find out what OEM number Gateway provided with the initial installation so that I can legally install. Microsoft provides a free upgrade to 8.1 - I had a notion to call them, explain my situation, and ask them if I could just use my 8.1 media to do what I need. But I'd have to at least (if they would even do this) provide them with my Gateway 8 OEM number, which I don't have access to. It's blocked out except for the last 4-5 characters. (During the activation, you can see the verification.)
What can I do? Will Gateway (Acer) provide install media for me to use? About how much will it cost? I"m not opposed to spending a little money since the problem could be caused by something I did to the partition. Thanks for any advice.
I have a Gateway laptop that I'm going to sell because I don't use it anymore. It originally came with Windows 8 (no install media), but I had since accepted the 8.1 upgrade whenever it became available. So to prepare for the sale, I chose to reset the PC to the factory Gateway settings from the recovery partition (went without a hitch) and being the nice guy that I am, went ahead and did all the updates, and attempted upgrading to 8.1 again. Nothing but problems. Several times I got messages that it couldn't install properly, needed to restart, or some other problem. I finally got into 8.1, continued to do the updates for 8.1 and now I'm stuck in an endless "Automatic Repair" boot. No matter what I do, I can't get it to pass this portion of the boot.
I did, at one time, setup a Live boot (USB) of Linux with this laptop, but never messed with any of the drive partitions or anything. Only used the portions of the OS that would operate via the USB (was just trying a particular distribution.) When I go into my BIOS, one of the bootup options is "ubuntu", which I assume is being picked up from one of the partitions on the HDD. How this got there I have no idea. There must have been something that the live boot did at one point or another (or I did accidentally) to rename one of the partitions. However, diskpart doesn't report this label, GParted (in Linux) doesn't report this label, and I can't figure out how it got there. At this point I'm assuming that this (not the label, but something else) is possibly causing my issues.
At this point I feel that I need to just wipe the drive completely off and start over. But I can't do that because Gateway didn't provide any install media. I have 8.1 media that I purchased for another machine, but I obviously can't use that.
Is there a way to extract an installable tool from what I have available to me? I would also need to find out what OEM number Gateway provided with the initial installation so that I can legally install. Microsoft provides a free upgrade to 8.1 - I had a notion to call them, explain my situation, and ask them if I could just use my 8.1 media to do what I need. But I'd have to at least (if they would even do this) provide them with my Gateway 8 OEM number, which I don't have access to. It's blocked out except for the last 4-5 characters. (During the activation, you can see the verification.)
What can I do? Will Gateway (Acer) provide install media for me to use? About how much will it cost? I"m not opposed to spending a little money since the problem could be caused by something I did to the partition. Thanks for any advice.
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 10 / Linux Mint 17.2 / OS X
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- CPU
- Intel i5 4660 3.2
- Motherboard
- Asus H97I-PLUS
- Memory
- 8GB