This Gateway laptop does not boot to windows. It'll go as far as the loading screen, with the status bar endlessly moving on the bottom, and the Windows Logo not showing. It has gone to a blue screen every once in a while after 15-20 min, but it quickly reboots, and I haven't caught the message. During reinstallation of windows it endlessly hangs on the Completing Installation step. I thought this was a HDD problem, since the laptop had been dropped shortly before this problem started. Replaced hard drive and getting exact same situation. Also tried both XP and Vista with same exact problem. Any ideas? I really want this to work.

my computer does the same thing with vista, although XP works without a problem. on my computer, after a while of the loading bar moving, the screen just goes black and the computer freezes. then after about 5 minutes, the cd drive ejects, then nothing. i've been told it was a problem with the BIOS firmware, but the problem still occurs after updating the BIOS. i've tried running it in safe mode, but a dialogue box just says it can't continue in safe mode, and it reboots. have you tried updating your BIOS or booting it into safe mode?

I have tried Safe Mode and it's pauses at the same file everytime. I've also reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled windows, on two seperate hard drives in the computer.

which file does it freeze on?

mine is doing the exact same thing now. i turned off the computer while it was booting windows, then pulled out a sata dvdr drive, and now it goes to a blank screen after the windows loading screen. safe mode always tops at crcdisk.sys. so yeah, i did two things that could each be the cause. it's been on crcdisk for several minutes now. maybe it's actually crc'ing the discks but i don't hear them running.