OS: Windows 7
Computer: Gateway
Recovery tool: Gateway Recovery Management v 7.5.3.3
I suspect this isn’t a specific computer model related issue, but related to all Gateways with the Gateway Recovery Management Utility.
For this specific situation, the Gateway Recovery Management utility came on 3 (kind of suspect) DVDs (the laptop owner had labelled themselves). Naturally I plugged the DVD into the drive and saw if there was a program that I could run to recover my system. As I ran the DVD I noticed that it automatically created two new virtual drives, which I suspect one of which was disc 0 partition 3. I was able to run the Recovery Management utility, but after I made it through the first two steps and was on the Restore Destination step, the utility popped up with an error:
Fail to format disk 0 partition 3
About Gateway Recovery Management Utility
Gateway Recovery Management is a utility that has two options:
- Restore the computer to it’s factory original state. This erases all data on the hard drive.
- Partial restore. This will remove all the programs on the computer and kind of start Windows fresh, but leaves all your personal files like pictures and music and documents etc.
How to Run Gateway Recovery Management Utility
What I found out from this Major Geeks thread was that this problem is because I was trying to run the utility from Windows, and not booting to the recovery disks.
- MAKE SURE YOU’VE ALREADY BACKED UP AND SAVED ON AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE OR CD OR DVD ALL YOUR IMPORTANT FILES AND DOCUMENTS. ALL FILES ON THE COMPUTER WILL BE ERASED.
- Put your Gateway Recovery disk 1 into the DVD drive of your computer
- Reboot your computer and while booting press F2 (I do it repeatedly until it boots into the BIOS setup utility)
- Ensure that you have set the boot order of your drives so that the first item to boot is your CD/DVD drive
- F10 saves and exits
- Since the Gateway Recovery disk is already in your DVD drive, and that’s booting first, it should automatically run the utility
- Follow the on-screen prompts. This first thing you’ll be asked is what I talked about above with the two options you can choose. If your computer has become infected with viruses or a trojan, I’d highly suggest doing a complete restore. No messing around.
Conclusion
So, to solve the initial problem simply, most likely the restore utility has been run from Windows, and instead needs to be booted into. So make sure all files are backed up, boot into the DVD (this might mean changing BIOS boot sequence), and follow the prompts like the good nerd you are.
Hope this helps!