Help!! I lost my work and my tablet :(

monamor

Help I need all the help I can get.
few days ago I was working on my tablet ( gateway M275 convertible ), when I ran out of charge and since the electric outlet was far, the system went on hybernating. Upuntill now I wasn't worried, later on I charged the batteries and tried to finish my work but It wouldn't work. Only the blue power light is on but no windows booting, no allerting, nothing the screen is dead black. I tried removing the battery. I forgot the recovery CD in austeria, It needs about a month to get them back. I contacted the gateway support system they told me that they don't send a replacement cd. I went to the distriputer in here the same answer, the technition guy even told me that " I should puy a new one."
I liked that system and I only had it for a year. Can anyone tell me what can I do?? My work deadline in 20 days and I have a dead system
Would installing windows xp be better?? or it has to be tablet edition? would installing a brand new version, enables me to restore my work or some of it?

yours
monalisa

kryyst

Sounds like it may just be stuck in hibernation mode. Remove the battery and only have the AC plugged in for the time being. If you press the power button is it doing anything at all? If it's in hibernation it should basically blip the computer and you should see some more lights come on or a fan or something. Even if it just basically blips and goes dormant again that's a good sign.

If you can get it to blip as it's blipping press and hold the power button, for 10 - 15 secs. That (in theory) should kick it out of hibernation and force it to actually shut off. At which point you should be able to turn it back on.

As for recovering it, I don't know enough about that machine to know if you need a special tablet version of XP or not a normal version of XP should work, though you may loose some of the tablet features. I just don't know enough about it to say for certain one way or the other.

But if you are really concerned about recovering the data you could remove the harddrive put it into an external enclosure and connect it to another computer to recover the data. As long as you haven't installed any disk encryption features.

Machine Info if anyone else is looking

monamor

hello kryyst;
thanx for replaying and I will do all of it right away. However, in case it didn't help, would you please explain the way of removing the hard drive step by step. I am afraid of doing anything wrong which might affect the whole thing.
thanx again
monamor

kryyst

I can't give you an exact step by step. But here's the gist.

1) Make sure the power is off to the machine. Best way to do that is remove the battery and the AC power.

2) Flip your computer upside down.

3) On the bottom you should see different diagrams on various 'plates' that are held down by screws. They will be small shallow screws usually one or two to a plate. Don't mix them up with the longer often deeper sunk case screws that hold the whole machine together.

4) Look for the plate for covering your hard drive. It's fine to remove plates they won't wreck anything. Usually you'll have a plate covering a ram slot, one for an internal modem/wifi card and one for your Harddrive. If you can't find one for your harddrive it's possible it's integrated into the side of your case and not the bottom. it's not uncommon for them to be where the PCMCIA ports are located or near the cdrom. There should be a diagram but I couldn't tell you what it is on that machine.

5) Once you find the harddrive and remove the screws either the plate will drop off exposing the harddrive encasement or it may pull out from the side. You just wiggle it gently and it will come out. There are no cables just sockets so you have to be a little careful so none of the pins get bent. Fortunately due to how they are installed it's actually pretty difficult to bend the pins.

6) So now your harddrive is removed. It'll probably be screwed into a tray with 4 screws either in the side or bottom. Remove the screws and the harddrive will come out. You need this bare harddrive so you have access to the pin headers.

7) Then it's off to your friendly neighbourhood computer store to get a 2.5" external harddrive enclosure.

monamor

a big bow for u kryyst
you r an expert certainly; I followed what you told me to, yet it blinged but not working. I decieded to move p level and get out the hard drive, and so i did. Not knowing that the hard drive is infact in a very easy to reach and open spot i open every bult and nut in the poor tablet. when i got the hard drive out, couldn't hook it to the external case I have got. so, sadly i returned it intending to just forget all about this machine and start my work all over.
I told myself to give the last try and i press the power botton, it worked!! I could not believe it. I joined the forum back to tell kryyst how thankfull I am. I got my system working and my work is all here, better yet I did fix it myself through kryyst instruction
thanx alot
monamor

Leonardo

Now, dig out some CDs/DVDs and BACK UP your work! NOW



It would appear your hard drive over time had just worked its way a little loose from its connector.

kryyst

I was thinking of suggesting and putting the harddrive back in. It wouldn't have been a loose connector, but it could have reset the hibernation feature. Computers are such fun little beasts.

The external case you have is probably for a normal (3.5") harddrive, like in a standard computer. To use the one from your tablet you'd have to get an adapter or a different enclsure.

But in any event glad it's working now. The trick is that hibernation mode. I personally wish they never invented it I've seen more trouble from that feature with regards to laptops then most others. It just doesn't work as ideally as people think it will and then you get problems.

Now as Leo said. You should backup your work. I don't think there is anything wrong with your tablet, it just got stuck. But if the data on it is important to you it's worth backing up to be sure.