Commiting Suicide, Or Destroying A Gateway Notebook Completely And Step On It, Before Burning It?

[lostinisaan]

Hello and Sawasdee khrap,

Just wanted to do an old friend a favor and spent many many hours to upgrade a Gateway notebook from home pro to 7 Ultimate.

Unfortunately, did the owner, a victim of the Alzheimer's disease, try to set an Admin password, messed certain things up and all in a sudden was the machine in such a bad mood that no changes were possible, didn't even let me sign in as a guest, to use the Acronis, I had installed.

My installation, which took me plenty of hours was destroyed within a few minutes. The guy shut the machine down, when trying to restore, but he did that also when the system was trying to repair itself. And of course many things he couldn't even remember.

So I tried many things, but no way to get this machine into a mode to make any changes, then all in a sudden the touch pad din't work anymore.

The only way to solve this issue was to set it back to factory settings, which took all night long. This morning I put on Acronins and it took a few attempts to get it back to where I'd finally left it, before I gave it back to my friend.

But the touch pad problem still exists, when I check Control panel, driver's updated. I know that there're certain keyboard commands that enable, or disable the touchpad.

Is anybody on this forum familiar with Gateway machines? I'd deeply appreciate how to enable the pad again. Just saw a youtube video, with Fn and another F" command that en- and disables this function.

Thanks a lot in advance, I wouldn't ask such a question, if I'd have more time, We'll have visitors at school for the next three days and I'm more than busy doing other stuff.

In my dream last night, I saw the notebook as shown on the photos. I give it only one more try, then................................

Khop Khun La Lai.-

[crabdog]

Try uninstalling the touchpad from device manager and rebooting. Other than that I can only suggest checking in the taskbar to see if you can open the software settings (I have an icon in my taskbar called "Dell Touchpad".

Was the current driver auto-installed along with Windows? If so then go to the Gateway support site and download the correct driver from there.

[Jiu-Jitsu]

You do know that it takes only a minute to upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate? No need to back anything up...it's just a matter of entering a Product Key.

[lostinisaan]

You do know that it takes only a minute to upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate? No need to back anything up...it's just a matter of entering a Product Key.

Seems that I took the wrong way home.

Touch-pad's working, pretty easy by pressing Fn +F4 .Thanks a lot, could also find the old Admin passwords and delete them.

Always when I wanted to st an Admin password, the first owner's name popped up, asking for something I had no idea about.

Pretty much scary how easy it is, to crack almost all passwords.

[wilgoster]

If suicide is the only "viable " alternative, take a stab at it, take the plunge. And if it's groundhog day, what do ya got to lose. Wipe the hard drive and give the P____ __ C___ to a kid. Then go out and buy a Mac. People who won't be cleaning up your suicide will thank you and you'll be on cloud login. Worst thing - you'll wake up and have to buy that Mac all over again, no so bad.

[phazey]

If you need to recover a lost admin password, boot the HIRENS bootCD, which has a tool to reset such things.

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

[dddave]

I have a GATEWAY, about 5 years old. Gateway is now a part of the ACER GROUP and Acer Service Centers will service it if any problem arises that you can not handle.

One problem I have always had is that GATEWAY user information online is very generic. Finding specific information for a particular Gateway model is usually impossible. For example, I was never able to find a page explaining the various and sometimes arcane keyboard icons for my model. It was one of the least expensive full featured laptops available at the time (Best Buy) but it has proved to be durable and dependable except for a defective HD which ACER replaced under warranty.

Edited January 6, 2015 by dddave

[lostinisaan]

If you need to recover a lost admin password, boot the HIRENS bootCD, which has a tool to reset such things.

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

The whole problem was more complex than I first thought. I had deleted all passwords with a similar program your link provides, but when I set a new one, the old crap came back.

I already have Password Recovery Bundle Pro, but it doesn't let me create a boot able memory stick. Finally, I went to see one of the best technicians at a friend's computer shop. He tried a program, switched the passwords off, rebooted and all was fine.

When I came home, I set a new password, rebooted and the <deleted> was back. Good luck was that I had my memory stick with me and the guy gave me the whole program.

The guy at the computer shop couldn't use all features of the program, because it's in English. Now I've got a nice program that let's me do amazing things,

And I've learned quite a few new lessons as well. Thanks.

[bendejo]

He tried a program, switched the passwords off, rebooted and all was fine.

Confused and curious, what passwords did he 'switch off'? Was it Windows UAC? This can be done without another program, if that's what he did.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-user-account-control-uac-the-easy-way-on-windows-vista/

What is this program?

[lostinisaan]

He tried a program, switched the passwords off, rebooted and all was fine.

Confused and curious, what passwords did he 'switch off'? Was it Windows UAC? This can be done without another program, if that's what he did.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-user-account-control-uac-the-easy-way-on-windows-vista/

What is this program?

Thanks for the useful tip. Maybe I forgot to mention that the machine wasn't bootable and therefor no possibility to go the usual way to change/disable Admin and other passwords.

Please see attached screenshot.