Gateway laptop NV78 duo processor problem

[erjacobs00]

Hello,
once I turn on my Gateway laptop NV78 duo processor, it says to "press F2 to enter setup" then once you press F2, it says "Please wait..." and nothing ever happens. won't turn on. not sure what category this goes in...

 

[icraig]

Is there any reason why you're trying to go into the BIOS (setup)?

 

[erjacobs00]

no, just trying to turn on the computer. not trying to change settings of any sort, it won't get past that to turn on and so I can use it

 

[Guest]

I have the same computer with the same exact problem. What were you doing right before you shut the computer down? Did you have any peripherals connected? I was trying to sync up some music to my phone, but it wouldn't connect so I decided to restart my computer. That is when it stopped working. Any help would be much appreciated. I still have it under warranty so, if I can't problem solve it myself, once I get it repaired I will be sure to report back.

 

[jtreis]

I have the same computer with the same exact problem. What were you doing right before you shut the computer down? Did you have any peripherals connected? I was trying to sync up some music to my phone, but it wouldn't connect so I decided to restart my computer. That is when it stopped working. Any help would be much appreciated. I still have it under warranty so, if I can't problem solve it myself, once I get it repaired I will be sure to report back.

Have you gotten it repaired ? What was the problem ? I have the same computer, and the same exact problem... but it is not under warranty... Thank you..

 

[erjacobs00]

it was under warranty luckily at less than a year old, I think it needed a new motherboard, but honestly it has been so long I can't completely remember. must be a crappy model because we had only used the computer a handful of times! but I know the warranty saved us hundreds of $$s. Good luck!

 

[biomech1]

it was under warranty luckily at less than a year old, I think it needed a new motherboard, but honestly it has been so long I can't completely remember. must be a crappy model because we had only used the computer a handful of times! but I know the warranty saved us hundreds of $$s. Good luck!

actually u didn't save anything whenever you phone is hooked up to the computer on reboot the computer recognize the phone as a hard drive and get hunged up searching for boot files if you unplug ur phone or any type of media dive the computer will start rite up....

 

[Cappy Cross]

Quote Originally Posted by shoitz View Post
Hi Greg and Lisa,

I registered just to make this post, so I hope somebody's still listening! lol

I had the exact same problem, and after much digging I was able to solve it. Greg was on the right track (oh so close!), he just needed the right filename. Well for our laptop, the correct filename (or at least the one that worked for me) was: KAYF0X64.fd

Credit to Andy's tool over at My Digital Life Forums. I was able to download a BIOS file from Gateway, then analyze the .fd BIOS file with Andy's tool. It gave me the recovery file name. From there, the rest was (fairly) painless. Here's the quick notes I wrote up on the procedure -- hopefully it helps somebody (Google voyagers from the future perhaps):

I realize I'm late to the party, but I just went through figuring this thing out. Had to re-flash because of a corrupt BIOS. No disassembly required... If you have the same one as me then this should work (NV78 KAYF0 for me, also known as NV7802U or NV7802U-US). Download the latest BIOS from Gateway. Open the archive and find the *.FD file. Extract it to a USB flash drive. Rename it to KAYF0X64.fd (that's the BIOS recovery filename). Completely power down the laptop (remove battery, unplug, hold down power button while everything's disconnected for 10 seconds or so to discharge caps). Hold down Fn + ESC, plug the laptop back in, and power it on while still holding Fn + ESC. Fan will power on (display will show nothing) but if your flash drive has an LED on it you'll see that it's being accessed (flashing LED activity light). After 30-45 seconds or so it will shut back down. I waited 10 seconds or so, then disconnected the flash drive and rebooted. BIOS should be flashed! That is of course, if the emergency recovery feature wasn't disabled in the BIOS in the first place... (hopefully it wasn't!)

Let me know if I left out any important steps. If you're wondering why I would do this, symptoms were basically a corrupt BIOS -- laptop would boot to Gateway logo (and if you press ESC you'll get some additional text including BIOS version... for me it was 2.0.7). But it won't do anything more than that. If you press F2 to get into the BIOS, it will freeze while displaying the message indicating that it's going into the BIOS settings, but it will never get there. Once I re-flashed the BIOS (for me I used 2.0.8 but presumably any version should work. If not, I would recommend trying 2.0.8 like I did). Then I updated the BIOS to the latest version, feeling reasonably confident that I could recover if the flash went awry.
O...M...G! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I had given my client's laptop up for dead after checking numerous forums and finding only the usual "remove battery, AC adapter, hold power button" routine. I reworded my search string numerous times, same result. Gave it one more college try and found this thread, years after the last post. Sure enough, Gateway thankfully still has the 2011 BIOS update on their web site. Followed the instructions to the letter and BAM, as Emeril Legassi would say lol, the machine booted up normally into Windows and is alive to compute another day! Thank you so much for posting this, you've helped make my client's Christmas merrier! Peace and blessings upon you!
Cappy

 

[stephentwilson]

THANK YOU, THANK YOU. Same issue, followed procedure exactly - even had an old USB stick with an LED. Took 7 minutes to fix following your post. To no avail previously, I fooled around an hour trying every combination of memory HD reseating.
THANK YOU.

Quote Originally Posted by shoitz View Post
Hi Greg and Lisa,

I registered just to make this post, so I hope somebody's still listening! lol

I had the exact same problem, and after much digging I was able to solve it. Greg was on the right track (oh so close!), he just needed the right filename. Well for our laptop, the correct filename (or at least the one that worked for me) was: KAYF0X64.fd

Credit to Andy's tool over at My Digital Life Forums. I was able to download a BIOS file from Gateway, then analyze the .fd BIOS file with Andy's tool. It gave me the recovery file name. From there, the rest was (fairly) painless. Here's the quick notes I wrote up on the procedure -- hopefully it helps somebody (Google voyagers from the future perhaps):

I realize I'm late to the party, but I just went through figuring this thing out. Had to re-flash because of a corrupt BIOS. No disassembly required... If you have the same one as me then this should work (NV78 KAYF0 for me, also known as NV7802U or NV7802U-US). Download the latest BIOS from Gateway. Open the archive and find the *.FD file. Extract it to a USB flash drive. Rename it to KAYF0X64.fd (that's the BIOS recovery filename). Completely power down the laptop (remove battery, unplug, hold down power button while everything's disconnected for 10 seconds or so to discharge caps). Hold down Fn + ESC, plug the laptop back in, and power it on while still holding Fn + ESC. Fan will power on (display will show nothing) but if your flash drive has an LED on it you'll see that it's being accessed (flashing LED activity light). After 30-45 seconds or so it will shut back down. I waited 10 seconds or so, then disconnected the flash drive and rebooted. BIOS should be flashed! That is of course, if the emergency recovery feature wasn't disabled in the BIOS in the first place... (hopefully it wasn't!)

Let me know if I left out any important steps. If you're wondering why I would do this, symptoms were basically a corrupt BIOS -- laptop would boot to Gateway logo (and if you press ESC you'll get some additional text including BIOS version... for me it was 2.0.7). But it won't do anything more than that. If you press F2 to get into the BIOS, it will freeze while displaying the message indicating that it's going into the BIOS settings, but it will never get there. Once I re-flashed the BIOS (for me I used 2.0.8 but presumably any version should work. If not, I would recommend trying 2.0.8 like I did). Then I updated the BIOS to the latest version, feeling reasonably confident that I could recover if the flash went awry.
O...M...G! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I had given my client's laptop up for dead after checking numerous forums and finding only the usual "remove battery, AC adapter, hold power button" routine. I reworded my search string numerous times, same result. Gave it one more college try and found this thread, years after the last post. Sure enough, Gateway thankfully still has the 2011 BIOS update on their web site. Followed the instructions to the letter and BAM, as Emeril Legassi would say lol, the machine booted up normally into Windows and is alive to compute another day! Thank you so much for posting this, you've helped make my client's Christmas merrier! Peace and blessings upon you!
Cappy

 

[Fernee]

Thanks for helping with this topic, I HAVE THIS PROBLEM NOW!!
I don´t know if it´s too late since this post is a couple of years old, but anyway, I have to ask....
Wher can I find the mentioned "Andy's tool".... I found: amiflash, AMIBIOS, Aptio, AMI_Mod_Tool_1.54_and_Award_Mod_Tool_1.37....
but nothing works as you mentioned, to extract the *.FD file....
I look at the https://www.bios-mods.com/downloads/ page, and there´s a lot of tools, but can´t find the one you used...
Thanks a lot.

Fernando.

 

[Kloko_]

Hi, I just repair my Gateway nv78 laptop with same issue and this is how exactly work:
Without any power on computer (battery must be removed and power cord disconnected) press power button to discharge capacitors in laptop. Then plug usb memory stick with bios xxxxxx.fd program on gateway site http://www.drivethelife.com/laptop/gateway/31487.html
when you find .fd file rename it in KAYF0X64.fd and put in usb memory stick.

What i important and nobody talk about it than not every usb memory stick will work ! I try 3 different memory stick and only one worked i do not know why, somebody says it should be old usb m. stick with no more than 1gb capacity but mine was 32gb and it worked!

Ok...... usb is in laptop, now press fn+esc and hold, after that plug in power adapter connector on your laptop and press power button, after 5sec when fan starts let go fn+esc and laptop should turn off after 1min or so and that is