Re: Studying abroad, devastating weird laptop problem

Hi,


I think both Rick Rogers and Charlie Tame could be right.

However, I would suggest you to stop the troubleshooting process at this point, and I found the following address from Gateway, USA by clicking "China" on their main page:

http://cn.gateway.com/

You may want to have a local friend translate the page for you, and all you want is a local support phone number.

PS: As pointed out by Charlie Tame, you may also want to ask your local friends about voltage converter (which may not be required by newer models) and plug adapters (as far as I can remember - very confusing).

Hope this helps and good luck.




"popular" <brenden.cline@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:38e0d86fd227861645d313c0351a4495@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I'm studying abroad in China and my laptop has a really weird problem,
so I apologize in advance but this is a bit long.

I moved in with a host family last week, and 5 minutes after getting
the internet to work and beginning to Skype chat people (without video)
my computer (Gateway laptop model MT3423 I think, Vista Premium, Dual
Core AMD Turion, ~2 years old in good condition) froze and hasn't been
the same since. Now, booting brings me to the recovery screen (of course
- Normal Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, etc.), but no Safe Mode works
- I can get to the login screen but after signing in the Welcome screen
with the loading circle stays up indefinitely. Normal Mode works though,
but it has major issues. After successfully signing in programs begin to
load but it quickly slows down to a crawl, and takes about a minute to
close the two program warning boxes that pop up (just the usual 'this
program is unregistered' sort of thing). After this, Windows Calendar
inexplicably loads, again painfully slow, and if the computer hasn't
crashed by this point then it does shortly thereafter. And the crash
varies - a few times it started with a "Server Busy - this action cannot
be completed" error message but it usually says euphemistically
"Microsoft Windows - this application is not responding."

I've tried several things but I haven't had any success. During this
loading window, I've tried running msconfig and unchecking nonessential
programs, but even after clicking Save Changes and Restart the changes
are not saved, and it'll still proceed to crash and load the programs
again next boot. I've tried loading the control panel, but it becomes
unresponsive after I try to click anything in it. I tried opening
accessories under the Start Menu and it bugged out, and instead of
showing the folder icon it showed a searching icon and wouldn't open.
The Command Prompt loaded but was too slow to execute anything. I also
tried opening Task Manager, even through Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and after a
few minutes it successfully loaded once but didn't show anything unusual
and then crashed.

I'm not sure what the problem is - the only things I can think of are
that I had just setup 3 identical automatic broadband internet
connections as I was troubleshooting the connection, the room was really
hot (about 90 degrees F), and I had an SD memory stick in when I booted
up the last few times before this. Also, I installed a Logitech Quickcam
a few weeks before (whose software loads in the tray automatically) and
one of the 2 popups that load is new, bugging me about registering
EarthDesk. It seem to me like any of this should cause my problem, but
it seems to me that it's a software problem, in part because I don't
have any real evidence of hardware failure (although it does get really
hot, but the fan is still working) and because while Windows will be
crashing and I can't use the Start Menu, I can still hover over programs
in the tray and have their name popup (but the battery status and volume
control won't).

Anyone have any advice/input? I'm going to try to get a copy of the
recovery CD, but that'll take at least a week and there are no
authorized Gateway repair centers in China, not to mention the language
barrier and risk involved, especially if I don't know what's wrong...
Thanks a lot everyone!


--
popular

.

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