Pen drive,camera,ext. hard disk not detecting, mouse working fine

If your laptop appears to boot up and the hard disk LEDflashes, then the problem is probably a back light fault. This can be a faultyinverter or a faulty CCFL lamp. Please click on this link and follow myinstructions to identify the fault and possible fix :- http://www.fixya.com/support/r3598095-faulty_laptop_lcd_screen

Check in the BIOS to see it the hard drive is detected, Listen to the laptop to see if you can hear the hard drive is spinning, if its ticking the hard drive is stuck due to being dropped or age.

Remove all connected devices and try and boot again.

Your drive is failing and you should back up any important data you need onto CD/DVD or an external USB device (hard drive/pen drive). The drive may keep working for a while but your system is warning you that it has detected a critical error with the drive and failure is imminent.

Click Start, click Run, type compmgmt.msc, and then click OK. 2. click Disk Management. The Disk Management window will appear.
3. On this disk management window, you can see some drives including the portable drive. Right click on your portable drive and click change drive letter and paths.
4. assign a new drive letter which is not used by any of your drives in My Computer.
5. After assigning the new drive letter your pen drive will show in my computer.

just try to repair your OS if you are using windows xp. use that repair option after F8 during installation of XP.

Have you "emptied" your Recycle Bin?

From the "Start" menu, look in "Accessories".
One of the accessories is a "disk cleanup tool". Run it.
It will also delete all your "Temporary Internet Files" that Internet Explorer has created.

Now that you have "moved" your pictures and movies,
what will you do if your external hard-drive "dies",
taking your _only_ copy of those files to its grave?

It's time to buy a *NEW* "internal" disk-drive, e.g., 400GB for under $100 for a "laptop" disk-drive, reinstall Windows onto it, and copy (not "move") all your files from the external disk-drive to the new disk-drive.

The Gateway M465-e is only compatible the SATA hard disk drives. If the drive you are using is not a SATA drive, then it will not be able to work with your hard drive.

The problem is either the BIOS is not detecting the hard drive or the hard drive is faulty or the disk controller is faulty. Check the BIOS setting to see if it has detected the hard disk, and if there is a hard drive diags run it to test the hard drive. Try reseating the hard drive and if it doesn't work, remove the hard drive and connect it to an USB hard drive adapter. Plug this adapter into a working computer's USB port and if this computer detects this as an external hard drive and you can view and open the various folders and files, then the hard drive is OK. If you haven't any files or folders in the hard drive, then format the hard drive from this computer to test this hard drive. If the hard drive is OK then the fault is probably the disk controller. If the hard drive is faulty, then you need a new hard drive in your computer.

You computer cannot find your hard disk. The hard drive could be faulty or the hard disk controller has failed.
Reseat the hard drive (remove it and install it again), this may fix your problem with the connector on the motherboard.
If reseating doesn't work, the hard drive may be faulty, remove the drive and insert it into a USB hard drive adapter and plug it into a working computer's USB port, if this computer see your hard disk as an external drive and you can see the contents of the hard drive then it is OK and the fault most likely is the controler in the laptop.
If you cannot see the hard drive then the hard drive is faulty. To get your laptop operational again, you need a new hard disk and need to install Windows on the new hard disk together with your

Greetings...

You have 3 paths to look at and you also need to think about the need to change out Vista for XP...

Vista has gotten a bad rap on being something that does not work... it works fine... unless you have some very old program that you have to have for your job, Vista will work just fine...

Now... 1. you can install a boot manager and have both Vista and XP on your computer... 2. you can reformate you HD and install XP, you have an XP disk and code??? 3. you can run Virtual PC on Vista and install XP, still need the disk and code...
Virtual PC will allow you to fire up XP and run it as a separate program on top of Vista... and it's a free download...

Still I would look at just why you need to change... I have been running Vista since before it came out and other than a couple of programs in the beginning were a problem, everything works just great...

Have a great day...

Ed