Well I've seen some odd things happen with spurious things coming down
power supply lines, in fact a few weeks back I had a good quality APC
UPS hosed by something and it took out the computer PSU as well, but the
same setup in the next room was fine, which is weird in itself as the
outage was the same for both - oh well. We have bad power to our
facility and I've seen machines get corrupted for no reason at all,
usually installing a UPS fixes that. We don't know how the quality of
the supply is around here half the time, never mind what it is like in
China :)

One thing I have seen a lot is "Freezing", although power off and on
mostly gets them going again provided that not system files got hosed,
and the other good one is start screen/reboot/start screen ad infinitum.

xfile wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi,
>
>
> I think both Rick Rogers and Charlie Tame could be right.
>
> However, I would suggest you to stop the troubleshooting process at this
> point, and I found the following address from Gateway, USA by clicking
> "China" on their main page:
>
> [url]http://cn.gateway.com/[/url]
>
> You may want to have a local friend translate the page for you, and all
> you want is a local support phone number.
>
> PS: As pointed out by Charlie Tame, you may also want to ask your local
> friends about voltage converter (which may not be required by newer
> models) and plug adapters (as far as I can remember - very confusing).
>
> Hope this helps and good luck.
>
>
>
>
> "popular" <brenden.cline******.com> wrote in message
> news:38e0d86fd227861645d313c0351a4495@nntp-gateway.com...[color=green]
>>
>> I'm studying abroad in China and my laptop has a really weird problem,
>> so I apologize in advance but this is a bit long.
>>
>> I moved in with a host family last week, and 5 minutes after getting
>> the internet to work and beginning to Skype chat people (without video)
>> my computer (Gateway laptop model MT3423 I think, Vista Premium, Dual
>> Core AMD Turion, ~2 years old in good condition) froze and hasn't been
>> the same since. Now, booting brings me to the recovery screen (of course
>> - Normal Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, etc.), but no Safe Mode works
>> - I can get to the login screen but after signing in the Welcome screen
>> with the loading circle stays up indefinitely. Normal Mode works though,
>> but it has major issues. After successfully signing in programs begin to
>> load but it quickly slows down to a crawl, and takes about a minute to
>> close the two program warning boxes that pop up (just the usual 'this
>> program is unregistered' sort of thing). After this, Windows Calendar
>> inexplicably loads, again painfully slow, and if the computer hasn't
>> crashed by this point then it does shortly thereafter. And the crash
>> varies - a few times it started with a "Server Busy - this action cannot
>> be completed" error message but it usually says euphemistically
>> "Microsoft Windows - this application is not responding."
>>
>> I've tried several things but I haven't had any success. During this
>> loading window, I've tried running msconfig and unchecking nonessential
>> programs, but even after clicking Save Changes and Restart the changes
>> are not saved, and it'll still proceed to crash and load the programs
>> again next boot. I've tried loading the control panel, but it becomes
>> unresponsive after I try to click anything in it. I tried opening
>> accessories under the Start Menu and it bugged out, and instead of
>> showing the folder icon it showed a searching icon and wouldn't open.
>> The Command Prompt loaded but was too slow to execute anything. I also
>> tried opening Task Manager, even through Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and after a
>> few minutes it successfully loaded once but didn't show anything unusual
>> and then crashed.
>>
>> I'm not sure what the problem is - the only things I can think of are
>> that I had just setup 3 identical automatic broadband internet
>> connections as I was troubleshooting the connection, the room was really
>> hot (about 90 degrees F), and I had an SD memory stick in when I booted
>> up the last few times before this. Also, I installed a Logitech Quickcam
>> a few weeks before (whose software loads in the tray automatically) and
>> one of the 2 popups that load is new, bugging me about registering
>> EarthDesk. It seem to me like any of this should cause my problem, but
>> it seems to me that it's a software problem, in part because I don't
>> have any real evidence of hardware failure (although it does get really
>> hot, but the fan is still working) and because while Windows will be
>> crashing and I can't use the Start Menu, I can still hover over programs
>> in the tray and have their name popup (but the battery status and volume
>> control won't).
>>
>> Anyone have any advice/input? I'm going to try to get a copy of the
>> recovery CD, but that'll take at least a week and there are no
>> authorized Gateway repair centers in China, not to mention the language
>> barrier and risk involved, especially if I don't know what's wrong...
>> Thanks a lot everyone!
>>
>>
>> --
>> popular[/color]
>[/color]