I am having a problem with my gateway sx2801-07e desktop. It always freezes up and I usually have to hold down the power button to turn it off. My hard drive light stays on and only blinks a few times while im using it. The system is only 2 months old and I am wondering if I have a defective hard drive.

sound like thermal issue or failing hard drive
if it has any built in diagnostic program I would run that at least on the hard drive

you have to go to your power settings in control panel. Go to the option "what you power button does"

This is an indicator that the rams is damaged. Its not the mouse that freezing its the entire system keyboard etc,

the solution is to replace the rams. Open the side panel, remove the memory module (rams), Its located in a slot held together by 2 clips its a circuit board, thin and long in a slot cant miss it. But the exact same one and replace it.

You need to hit the power button just the once to bring it back out of hibernation mode. It may take around 30 seconds until you hear your computer starting to boot back up and a little longer for the screen to come on.
Failing this, you can try a hard reboot by holding down the power button until you hear your computer re-boot. Usually you need to hold around 10 seconds. However using this last method as a final resort will result in your computer telling you that it did not shut down properly.

At power on / power up, look for the key during the bootup (black screen with white text), that allows you to enter SETUP. If none designated such as F1, F2 F10 etc, then quickly click the delete button a few times and that may get you into setup. You may have to turn off the computer if you miss that window of time if it rfequires pressing the delete button a few times. Keep an eye out for the Enter Setup key though. To turn off the computer press and hold the power button 'till is shuts down and resart the process until you get to the setup screen in bios. In setup bios environment, look for set factory defaults and then save and restart. That may solve the issue of the lockup.

Make sure all fans are running power supply one to hehe Maybe a bad power button? I had a gateway that did some thing very close to that because the cpu fan was not turning and a hp that did that because the power supply fan was not turning. Thats where I would start then make sure the mem is seated good and not bad you know the drill ;) if you replaced the power supply with a factory replacment it should be a voltage or wattage problem. Might also try a hard boot the power plug take the cmos bat out hold the power button down for 20 or 30 secs some people say to leave the cmos bat out and try to fire it up. I know that works on some laptops but I always had better luck putting it back in for desktops cant hurt to try it. If you have two ram sticks in it pull the # 2 one and try to fire it up if nothing changes swap the # 2 one with # 1 leaveing slot 2 open and try it that will tell ya if it is a bad ram stick I dunno just my two cents hope it helps

Hi,

Remove the power cord and then take out the battery. Hold down the power button for 30 seconds, then plug in just the AC powercord and try turn the laptop on.

If it turns on let it boot into the operating system and then shut it down and put the battery back in.

Hopefully this will resolve the problem but if it doesn't turn on again with the battery in there is a problem with the battery.


Post back if you need more advice.


Good luck.

Probably you will need to replace the powerplug from the mother board. Usually this happens to this brand.
Check it up and I hope you can fix it.

Try holding the power button for about 6 seconds until it shuts down. Typically, when the light is fading in and out it is in standby mode. If that doesn't work and even after unplugging it - you may have a bad power supply and need a new one (that's the unit that the power cord plugs into and has a fan that always spins).
Hope this helps! Rate my solution!

flash your bios by moving jumper pins