My gateway 7330GZ with windows xp doesn't se my dvd-rw drive

Windows XP doesn't nativey support SATA. Check in BIOS to see if your motherboard supports sata to IDE emulation.
Comment back if you need further assistance.

It is sometimes difficult to burn on latop DVD drives as they don't have a lot of life-span, but, you could try a new DVD as the media itself can be the problem, you could get a couple of bad discs in a row.

If you can try a replacement drive or slowing down the burn speed.

Let me know how you get on

Just replace the drive, that unit is old and it has a bad reputation.

do u mean the hard drive??

Did you remember to enter the BIOS setup and change the boot drive so the system would look to the (optical) drive in which you have put your XP disk? In most cases, you must tell the system where to look for boot files and with a new hard drive, there are no files to find.

If you don't have any malware defense installed yet, and can again get it up and running enough to go on line, I would recommend all of the following:
- AVG Free Grisoft Home Page - Spybot S&D Spybot Home page - AdAware Lavasoft Home Page
Basic versions are either free or ask for donations.

I have the same problem with my Gateway 7330gz. My laptop got infected with spywares and it was so annoyed that I have to think about recover the system. So I did it with Gateway Recovery software. I chose the recovery option (press F11 when boot up)from hard drive since my dvd drive was broken. It went well but when it boots up again and Windows XP says detecting and installing the drivers and such, it was frozen haft way through. I turned off power many times to reboot but it kept freezing at that point. I search Internet for help and seen this post. Wonderful! I press F2 to go to BIOS setup screen, use right arrow key to move to Advance menu option. There I use down arrow key to select SpeedStep, hit (-) key to disable it. Then F10 to save and exit, hit enter for OK button. The system boots again but this time it was no longer freezing, the setup process went through ok and continues...I am so happy and type this message so it might help others with the same issue. Thanks

I had the same problem. I finally got a knowledgeable tech at Gateway who knew that a patch had to be downloaded. I'm sorry but I don't have the link anymore but you might be able to find it in there white papers now that you know that it exists

This link will provide you the required information.


Specifications
Part Number: 4997Gateway 7330GZ Notebook
System Gateway® 7330GZ Notebook Processor Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 532 with HT Technology
(1MB L2 Cache | 3.06GHz | 533MHz FSB) Determine Your Processor Speed
Chipset Intel® 852GME Screen 15.4-inch Widescreen Ultrabright TFT WXGA

• Maximum Resolution: 1280 × 800
• Maximum Color Depth: 32-bit (16.7 million colors)
• LCD maximum refresh rate: 60 Hz

Memory 512 MB DDR (1 × 512 MB), 333 MHz, DDR
Expandable to 1.5 GB Video Intel® Extreme 2 Graphics
Dynamic Video Memory Technology (DVMT) supports up to 64 MB shared video memory Audio PC2001 Compliant AC '97 Audio
Built-in Stereo Speakers Hard drive 80 GB HDD (4200 RPM) Optical drive DVD +/- RW Multi-Format

• Write maximum: 8X DVD +/-R, 4x DVD +/- RW, 24x DVD+R DL, 24X CD-R and 10X CD-RW disks
• Reads maximum: 8X DVD-ROM Disks, 8X DL/+RW, 24X CD-ROM disks

Media reader 6-in-1 Digital Media Manager
Compact Flash, Micro Drive, MultimediaCard (MMC), Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick, and Memory Stick Pro Modem 56K ITU V.92 ready Fax/Modem Network 802.11g integrated wireless (up to 54Mbps)
10/100Mbps integrated Ethernet LAN Pointing device Touchpad with Vertical Scroll Zone PCMCIA 1 - Type I or Type II; Card Bus Interfaces

• 4 - USB 2.0 Ports
• 1 - VGA External Connector
• 1 - IEEE 1394 port
• 1 - RJ11
• 1 - RJ45
• Microphone In
• Headphone/Audio Out

Battery 8-cell Lithium-ion Dimensions 1.6-inches H × 14.0-inches W × 10.4-inches D Weight 7.5 pounds (8.65 pounds total travel weight)

let's make sure that's a DVD RW disk shall we? check the front and make sure it says DVD RW..if it's DVD R, then it can't write.

This is a now issue with XP when you install a DVD/CD-it doesn't always happen but when it does there is nothing that can be done about it-I went as high as tier 3 support at MS and tried regediting, mapping, even a complete reinstall-nothing helped-untill I bought a cheep CD RW and installed it as anotuerh dirve. Then I had a DVD RW, and a CD RW. Problem solved