Windows 7 help with Gateway laptop

[StubbyKnight]

I am new to this community.

I am writing about a windows 7 Gateway NV55C laptop. It will not boot. At first I would just get a grey screen. Then I would get a message about corruption from new hardware/software with a choice of repair or normal boot. The repair would lead to the grey screen syndrome. The normal boot quick however, flashed a blue screen and then restarted.

I found that by holding F8 down I can try to boot in in safe mode, but that yielded the same result. Finally from the safe mode screen option, there was an option to disable the automatic restart. So instead of the blue flash followed by the restart, I could read the blue screen of death message: "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME".

So I take it that I will need, a bootable volume, either a CD or thumb drive with windows 7. But I am not sure what to do after that? What repair utility to use and where to get the windows 7 bootable volume.

One last question, If we upgrade, what version of software do people recommend we upgrade to? Also this laptop only has 3GB DDR3 memory, doesn't windows 8 require more RAM?

 

[C12Friedman]

How old is the laptop? If ~4years as I suspect, have you run into overheating issues prior to this behavior?

Here's what I'm thinking, the laptop is losing it's solder bonds which is making the laptop think there is some foreign hardware in there, I would suggest looking into a facility that can perform a reball of the CPU (or graphics if applicable)

Windows 8 comes in 32bit and 64bit versions, the 32bit can use a maximum of 4GB of ram while the 64bit version requires a minimum of 2GB to run (3GB is enough but I'd recommend more)

 

[StubbyKnight]

How old is the laptop? If ~4years as I suspect, have you run into overheating issues prior to this behavior?

Here's what I'm thinking, the laptop is losing it's solder bonds which is making the laptop think there is some foreign hardware in there, I would suggest looking into a facility that can perform a reball of the CPU (or graphics if applicable)

Windows 8 comes in 32bit and 64bit versions, the 32bit can use a maximum of 4GB of ram while the 64bit version requires a minimum of 2GB to run (3GB is enough but I'd recommend more)

Over heating has not been a problem and this laptop is about 3 years old. I have had nothing but problems with this machine, even when it was working. Mainly issues with speed. Which makes me think there may be bad RAM. But for now, I need to repair or recovery personal files.

 

[C12Friedman]

What I have found to be the easiest way to go about that is with the use of a different computer and a USB/SATA adapter like this Vantec 2.5"/3.5"/5.25" SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter Simply remove your hard drive and connect it up to another computer through that device, all your files will be available for transfer - it's a handy piece of hardware (I've owned the same one for over 10 years and can't begin to count how many times I've used it for situations just like that).
There is a USB 3.0 version but it seems a bit pricy IMO

Note: Newegg Link used for descriptive value