My darned kids gave their laptop the "blue screen of death"

Yep, that "blue screen of death"…Vista Home Premium is ths OS. The blue screen is saying, "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. UNMOUNTABLE _BOOT_VOLUME If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps: Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows updates you might need. If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use Safe Mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode. Technical information: ***STOP: 0x000000ED (0x85F57220, 0xC0000006, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)" I tried all the above, but to no avail. I even tried to boot from the Gateway operating system disc after going into BIOS boot settings having the pc boot from the disc…I'm defeated! P.S. it's a Gateway MT6840 with I believe 1GB of RAM, 160-200 GB hard drive…

Hi GroovNwitU.

On XP, ***STOP: 0x000000ED means a corrupted file system and I expect it's the same with Vista. The usual way to resolve this is to boot the XP/VISTA CD and start the Recovery Console, then run chkdsk /r at the command prompt.

Hi Ztruker! I appreciate the prompt response! I did try to use Gateway's OS restoration disk–again…It'll start off by saying, "Press any key to boot from cd/dvd"…Next screen comes up "Loading Windows Files"…After a few moments I get a black, blank screen with just the cursor arrow showing… Well, that's where it's at now… P.S. Ztruker…My kids know they messed up! (lol)…At this point, I don't care about any music an' carp** they've put on this laptop! I'm more than willing to start from scratch! A.K.A….Factory settings!

Gateway MT6840 Notebook

All I can suggest is to remove the drive and put it in an external USB 2.0 drive enclosure (buy or borrow - with fan is best).
Connect that via USB to another computer to run chkdsk /r. External enclosures run form $29 - $40. Last one I bought (with a fan) was $37 + shipping.

PS: All the manuals for this notebook are available here: {b} http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/2007/O…014554Rul.shtml

The Notebook Reference Guide, on page 82, tells you how to restore the computer to factory state (like new) by pressing F8 during boot till you get the Recover Options screen. Select Repair your computer and press Enter.

Follow directions from there.

You will lose everything on the notebook since this formats the drive and make it like new.