Gateway FX 6800-01e BIOS Update from Gateway Unsupported

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Ok, R01-B0 dated 05/19/09 is the new BIOS which Gateway didn't see fit to release to the public until 12/23/2009, they label it as 842P181G

So when you boot your system, on the Boot up screen you should see 842P181G

But when you run Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information
you'll see in the right column, AMI R01-B0, 05/19/2009

As to any freezing problems, chances are, it's most probably caused by any of the crap that Gateway installed on the system. Plus there is stuff that does run in the background monitoring the system so as to keep the restore files in the hidden (EISA) partition up to date.

From the sounds of things, you have one of the newer models, but with the same motherboard.

Read through this thread and you'll get a general idea of the problems caused by Gateway.

BTW...Gateway is actually Acer these days.
 
jcord51, if I were you, I would swap out your existing GTX 285 with another card , and see if those dots , discoloration or distortion are still there. I have seen these kinda problems and they are usually caused by video card's memory over-heating not CPU.
 
I think I will side with Renegade on this one hacking the bios is to dangerous I have things on here Id rather no one see and all it takes is one pissed off person to stick something in your bios and they can do what they want with your system or maybe they will just destroy it for the fun of it. Even if you just game with it who's to say they cant hack your home network with it. Those guys have been around for a long time but it just takes one to ruin there rep. if you want to overclock switch mobo's aleast if it fails you will have the gateway as a backup. Now if gateway for some reason would go ahead and open up the bios I would stay with this board because I have really not had any problems with it and a few extra fans placed inside cant hurt. And for a fast cooling fix for your processor look at coolitsystems self contain liquid cooler that should quiet down your gateway quit abit
 
Ok, R01-B0 dated 05/19/09 is the new BIOS which Gateway didn't see fit to release to the public until 12/23/2009, they label it as 842P181G

So when you boot your system, on the Boot up screen you should see 842P181G

But when you run Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information
you'll see in the right column, AMI R01-B0, 05/19/2009

As to any freezing problems, chances are, it's most probably caused by any of the crap that Gateway installed on the system. Plus there is stuff that does run in the background monitoring the system so as to keep the restore files in the hidden (EISA) partition up to date.

From the sounds of things, you have one of the newer models, but with the same motherboard.

Read through this thread and you'll get a general idea of the problems caused by Gateway.

BTW...Gateway is actually Acer these days.
Click to expand...
Thanks so much on explaining the BIOS to me. I just looked at the dates and assumed that 843p181g was the most updated BIOS, since mine are dated 5/19/2009. I'm not a Gamer per say, but use games as a tool to bench test my CPU. I have very few programs running in the background and my CPU usage rarely goes above 5% and memory is at 19% (9 gbs of RAM). You hardly hear this computer since the fans are at 1150 and 1060 rpms. It was while playing games that I saw that the games were freezing and that the fans really were not speeding up enough. They only sped up about 10 to 20%. My question now is how do I get the factory fans to speed up when needed? You can only access Smart Fan and that will make that factory fans go to 4000 rpms at all times and the CPU sounds like a turbo.
 

As I have stated, I'm really not a Gamer, but you picked up on what really scared me. I saw these little pencil point dots on the screen and immediately knew I had to cool off the video card. The game froze so I shut down the game and went to the desk top, but the dots were there as well. Once I rebooted the system the video returned to normal. I'm in the process of trying to fined out why my fans do not speed up fast enough to cool the system. I've only had the computer a few weeks and know my wife will have a baby if I start taking it apart while still under warranty. Why do you not like the GTX 285?
 

BTW did you see anything on calibrating the cpu and system fans?
 
Personally, I think the BIOS is a bit messed up as the the fan settings are not really very smart. If they were, the fan speeds would vary as needed instead of running full speed or almost negligible.

If anything, I would advise going with a liquid cooling system if the noise bothers you that much.

As to the Hack BIOS

I'm not so much worried about something being inserted into the code that shouldn't be there as that is the least of one's worries with a hacked BIOS on such a site a the Hacked BIOS comes from. Cause if he/she were to pull such a stunt, their reputation would suffer. Although I suppose it's always a risk one would take.

My main worry as I have stated twice so far is that I do not know the person who did the hacking and I do not know of that person's reputation either. So until I hear of successful results from others, I'm not willing to take the chance with my own system as I can not afford to purchase a new motherboard right now.

I'm not doubting MelodyChloe's word at all, just being cautious. :)

I do know of a couple of Firmware Hackers though although it's been over a year since I last spoke with them. But they mostly worked on NAS systems and Routers.
 


LOL, why would I dislike GTX285, its a fine piece of hardware, I have nothing against it, I suggest you to replace it with another video card to see if your problem still exists. Thats pretty much how we fix hardware related issues - by eliminating possible faulty hardwares one at a time , untill we find the faulty one. So if you can swap your card with your friend's just for testing purpose, and cross examine both your systems to find out if you GTX285 is faulty . I also may suggest you to install a Nvidia over-clocking tool, can't remeber the name now, and it should have options for your video card fan controll .
 


I just re-read your post and Im certian that your GTX285's cooling system is not working properly, it might be hardware like heat senser or software like dirver related. If I were you, I would defntly get a Nvidia tool of some sort and increase the GTX285s fan speed . When you are gaming, your video card is responsible for most of the work , the rest of your system do not have too much work load , thous low temp and fans not blowing hard, except your game is super CPU dependent, then thats another story.
 

We both seem to know what's going on and I did go to the Nvidea site and downloaded their video test software. It puts the video card thru two hours of stress and is a ten part test. Needless to say that the GTX 285 passed with no problem. I even downloaded the newest drivers which enabled the card to future 3D programs. Pretty cool! What I have done is add an additional cooling fan on the outside side of the case blowing into the area below the video card's inlet fan. This fan can be turned on and off as needed and is very quiet. I do have one more fan that can be added similar to the way Renegade has his setup at the rear of the case blowing out. The other solution I'm working on is software to set parameters on fan velocities depending upon heat. Software I found to do this is SpeedFan 4.40. You see Gateway will not honor their warranty if you mess with the case. When I got my CPU I noticed that the side doors had been misaligned at the factory and that they power driven the back screws causing the doors not to align with the front bezel. I called Gateway and the first thing they wanted was my creditcard number and stated that I must have dropped the CPU and that repair would be $220. That was my first experience with them the first hour of getting the CPU! Sorry about going on and on, but I really do like this CPU and love the fact that it uses hardly any System Resources.
 
Well i just bought one of these fine machines. it is a re-furb from tigerdirect and should be here tomorrow. i was making my list of everthing i needed to build one and it came up to about $900. i started surfing their site and found this for $649. i bought it and a WD 250GB HD. i plan to install Win 7 Pro 64 bit on the new drive and to use the original drive for storage. after reading all of these posts i'm almost regretting the purchase already.

i don't play any games so the speed and video card aren't my biggest concerns. i will be using it for my computer forensics/data recovery business and the hot swappable bays will be nice for wiping drives. i also have a 1TB external WD HD that i'll be using. i'm currently imaging a 320GB HD through USB2.0 and it has been running for about 26 hours now. i'm hoping with FireWire and eSata that i can reduce that time drastically.

This forum has been a great help and i plan to check it out as soon as it comes. i'll check the BIOS version and see what might have already been done to it. i've never been a fan of Gateway products but thought that the price was too hard to pass up. i think if i end up having too much trouble i'll switch to the Asus board that was mentioned. i don't have the time to troubleshoot this thing every few weeks.

also, i didn't buy any extra RAM yet but i followed a link that was posted here from amazon.com that they bought 6GB or memory for $90. well it's over $200 now 😱 . i'll stick with the 3GB for now and maybe go from there. i'm not interested in OC'ing it. i think it will be plenty fast for what i'm doing. i just don't want to have all the problems that i've read about. i plan to install the additional fans that were talked about here.

i'll keep everyone posted as to what i find. *keeping his fingers crossed*
 
welcome aboard dhay13, our computer is a great machine and a even greater bargin ( I bought mine refurbed too on ebay for $600 shipped because of 20% bing cash back. on top of that, it even comes with a 1 gig video card ) beside the bios issue and a small percentage of HDD failing, there is noing wrong with it, I love it so far , X58+core i 7 =win .
you don't need to spend $200 on fancy RAM, 3 more gig of ddr3 1066 is all you need. I got extra 3 gigs of new DDR3 1066 RAM off ebay for $35 shipped 3 weeds ago, so there are deals to be had , happy hunting.
 
wow, $35! i'll keep my eyes open. like i said, it doesn't have to be super fast, and may be fine as is. i just hope i don't have alot of issues with it.
 
I too have a FX6800-01e. I have read this entire thread and I want to clarify a few things. I apologize if these were answered in the more technical portions of certain responses.

I have not built any computers although I have upgraded and maintained quite a few and done troubleshooting for less experienced folks. Is it necessary to upgrade my power supply or fans/cooling elements just to increase my memory (to 6x2GB DDR3 1333)? I read that the low power supply and a lack of memory were cons to this model, but on the whole, it was still a good value, so now I am trying to compensate.

Also, I assume you can update the BIOS to the most recent version, rather than having to go through the one first mentioned in the initial post of this thread.

Many thanks to all the contributors, particularly Renegade_Warrior. This thread was a great find! I am grateful for your patience and full-length, informative answers.
 
well i got it today. i've already updated the BIOS to the newest version (R01-B0-5/19/09). all is good so far. i'm going to create the recovery disks then install the new HD and Win 7.

first thing i did when i got it was pull the cooling fan and remove the crap thermal paste and put arctic silver on it.

and i got the 1GB video card.


i'll keep you posted. thanks for posting the solutions, saved me a lot of aggravation.
 
wow. no wonder the hard drives were failing. i pulled this one out and about burned my hand removing it. and i've had the side panel off the whole time.

i don't think i'll get 7 installed tonight as i have other things to do. i got the BIOS updated and the HD changed. i did increase the fan speed but when i updated the BIOS it went back to where it was. it was pretty loud so i'm going to try it with the speed normal. my temps were ~86F on the CPU and ~105F on the system. this was before doing anything to it other that putting the thermal paste on. i haven't checked it since.

a note about the thermal paste; when i removed the cooling fan there was probably 1/4th of the CPU that had no paste on it. it looks like they put a dab in the center and thats all. i put a dab near all 4 corners and a small dab in the center to ensure good coverage. i'm sure it has to help.
 
You can have the cpu fan at regular speed, but as I previously have recommended, cut out the circular area in the back where the fan goes, then cover this with a round fan grill and replace the rear fan with a 120mm server grade fan (thicker - more powerful) and connect the power for the new fan with a molex connector from the power supply. Also add an 80mm fan inside the front of the case connected to one of the fan headers.You'll also want to add a fan to circulate the heat away from the memory either an 80mm or a120mm. You may have to jury rig this one with cable ties or some other way.

Then you'll want to leave the front drive bay open for airflow. All this will help with the cooling and make sure you do periodic cleaning to get rid of the dust in the case.

The only other way if you don't want to have the sound of the fans would be to go with liquid cooling using the radiator which mounts on the back of the case.
 
ok. i bought an 80mm fan from radio shack. the problem is that their fans don't have ends on them. i can splice ends but the new fan only has 2 wires (red and blue). all of my 120mm fans have 3 wires (black, red, and white).

suggestions?
 
I'm not sure of the pinout on the motherboard for the fan headers.

But Staples does have an 80mm fan which does have the correct connector on it and a 3 speed switch. I keep it set to full and it is quiet.

I just opened the side of my case. Guess I forgot that there are no molex connectors on the power supply and no extra connector either. Well, that's one reason to upgrade the power supply, extra power connectors for when you need them. Not just for video cards or hard drives.
 
i was digging through my stuff and found an 80mm fan with a molex on it but as you said, there's nowhere to plug it in. i also found a 580 watt PSU with SATA connectors on it. it's out of an old machine i had laying around. it's a demon black chrome. i could put that in. what i'm trying to do now is benchmark it to see what i might have to do to it. i'm looking for a real time temp reading for the CPU and the system. the BIOS reads about 85F on the CPU and 105F on the system. i can live with that but i really haven't 'used' it yet. i looked for sidebar gadgets that read temps but haven't found anything that will read CPU and system. the few that i did try to run gave errors on install.
the new WD HD feels much cooler that the original seagate that i removed. i still haven't installed the side panel yet so i was going to see how much of a difference that made.

any reliable apps out there for temps?
 
If you put the side panel on, make sure you leave the front bay door open for air flow.

As for connecting the fan, you may be able to get a hold of an SATA powertap extender meant to add more SATA power connectors. Get one which has both SATA and Molex connectors on it.
 


i'm now having the same problem. i'm using the drive that originally came with the computer. it feels like it engages the backplate and i tried both bays. device manager is good, no red or yellow anywhere but i don't see the drive bays there. disk management does not show the drives either. when i installed win 7 all existing drivers worked fine. i didn't have to install any additional drivers. i checked the BIOS settings and they are set as suggested earlier.

did you ever figure it out? what did you have to do?


EDIT

after reading the rest of the posts i did a search for the matrix storage manager, nothing. i'll try to download it here later.
 
After you insert the drive/s into the front bay, open the intel Matrix Storage Manager, then
select Actions > Rescan for Plug and Play Devices

The drive/s should then be detected.

All the drives on the inside and the front bay all connect to the same drive controller.

With the system laying flat on it's side so the motherboard is facing up, the SATA controller ports are as follows:

- - Left, Top Row - SATA-5 SATA-3 SATA-1 - Right, Top Row
Left, Bottom Row - SATA-6 SATA-4 SATA-2 - Right, Bottom Row

The Operating system drive (C:\Drive) should be connected to the SATA-1 port

The two SATA ports on the rear of the case are for the jmicron controller which is why when the
Gateway logo is disabled, if no drives are attached to the backside, that you see a message about
no drives being detected.
 
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