At 19:51 03/06/04, Maureen Egan wrote:
>We received a used computer from an insurance company and was
>told it works well. However, when we booted up, we receive the
>following message: Disk I/O error, replace disk, and press enter.
>The computer is a Gateway, P5-133. What is the meaning of this
>error? How can we get it operating again?


Hi again Maureen!

The reason I think the battery is dead is that I recall seeing
the error "No ROM Basic" from my P133 Gateway when there was
no hard disk drive in the machine at all. (The ROM Basic error
message was a throwback to the original IBM PC which included
the computer language Basic interpreter in the ROM chip...and
which would run only if there was no floppy or hard drive
present.)

When there was a readable disk (floppy or fixed) present that
had no boot files, you'd see the "Non system disk, replace
and hit any key to boot" error.

Since you see "Disk I/O error...", I'd think that there is a
(hopefully) working disk drive present but that it isn't
properly configured (in BIOS).

I like Dean's suggestion that the disk drive may have been
wiped for security purposes...but I still think you'd see a
different error message if that were the problem.

So try and enter BIOS Setup and get the hard disk and CDROM
drives recognized "automatically".

Regards,
Bill

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