Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of theericks
theericks

asked on

Gateway Laptop Hard Drive unexpectedly powers down

I have a Gateway 200ARC Laptop that I am having problems with.  About 60 days ago I thought the hard drive was going out so I replaced it with the same type that was in it.  Now I am beginning to wonder.

Recently, but not consistently, the hard drive sounds as if it powers down while you are working.  Sometime it just stalls for a few seconds then picks back up other times it just locks up.  I have to power down to restart it.

It is also hit and miss if BIOS recognizes it during boot.

I have gotten an error message from Windows, with a general message that a problem was caused by a hard drive and I have also gotten STOP ERROR 0C0000007A, KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE.  In the event logs, I do show and ATAPI error periodically. However all three of these are not consistent.

I updated the Controller drivers but still have a problem.

Could I have a faulty hard drive?  I have not worked on many laptops, but could this be the motherboard?  Does anyone know of any tests I can run or the best way to troubleshoot it?

Thanks for your help!
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Mark Poirier
Mark Poirier
Flag of Canada image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of theericks
theericks

ASKER

Great tool!  I found it was not the hard drive but the motherboard.  

Thank for your help!
Good New!   After further research (while shopping for a new motherboard) I found that there was a known issue with the Hard Drive cable on this particular model.

Gateway just sent me a repair kit for free.  So far so good.
Sounds great, good to know about the cabling issue.