"bradleywold" wrote in message
...

One of my computers is a Gateway desktop, that came with Vista Home
Premium. This computer has been giving me problems ever since I got it
last May. It has been giving me unexpected shut downs without warnings.
I have formated the hard drive numerous times, and finally paid Gateway
to get the restore disk so that I could do this. Well, the problem
kept continuing. I had talked to Gateway numerous times also. Anyway,
the
last straw was yesterday when I restored again, and this time she did a
shut down on me when it was installing the necessary updates. Now I
knew it wasn't a software incapability or something that I loaded that
was causing it. So I called Gateway again, and this time I rant and
raving about how I was frustrated about this and I wanted to find a
way to absolutely clear my hard drive from this corrupted thing or virus,
so I could do another clean format. After her research about this
problem, she suggested that I may have a bad hard drive, that is causing
this
problem. She offered to send me out a new hard drive for $75, and if I
sent the old hard drive back, I would get the money back. I accepted,
but was reluctant to commit to putting a hard drive in myself, since I
was unfamiliar with this. I am a hands on learner, and got most of my
computer insights from you guys, and problems that I try to get out of.
Anyway, she said it is not hard, and that Gateway would talk me through
it. The computer is on Manufacturer warranty, but I did not buy the
extended warranty from Best Buy; so I think that Best Buy would not be
able to help me out with this, nor would I want them too, since I hear
horror stories.

My question to you is: Does this sound like a reasonable explanation
to a solution, and how difficult is it to replace the hard drive. I would
like to be assured that this may be the solution to the problem. One
can only try. What are your ideas?? Thanks.


It may not be the hard drive. Does it ever shut down moments into booting,
as in before Windows starts to initialize? If it does, you could be looking
at an overheating CPU (fan and heatsink partially obstructed) or maybe even
the power supply..

--
Mike Hall - MVP
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