ED HAYES

The laptop I purchased gave me some trouble.  Most likely because it is substantially newer than the release of Windows Server 2003.

Gateway NV5214u

Laptop

I am using a Gateway NV5214u I purchased at Best Buy for $479 before tax.

• Warranty: 1 year limited
• Product Weight: 6.8 lbs.
• Processor: AMD Athlon™ X2 at 2.1 GHz
• Screen: 15.6″ WXGA (1366 x 768)
• Memory (RAM): 4GB DDR2 SDRAM
• Hard Drive: 320GB SATA
• Optical Drive: Double-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW
• Digital Reader
• Webcam
• Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 connector)
• Wireless Networking (B+G+N)
• HDMI
• USB 2.0 Ports: 4
• Battery Life: Up to 3 hours
• ENERGY STAR Qualified

When Installing the Windows Server 2003, I would continually get the Blue Screen of Death with these codes:

STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF789EA94, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000).

I solved the problem by setting the SATA Mode to “IDE Mode” in the bios (F2 on startup).

Network Drivers

After the instillation, I found that nearly all of my drivers were not found.  I called Gateway to locate the network drivers, but Gateway does not have my model in their support system yet!  Shame on them!

Knowing that Acer now owns Gateway, I headed over to their site and found a laptop similar to mine.  I then located that laptop’s drivers in their support section.  They had several drivers listed, so I downloaded them all and used a USB drive to copy them from my Mac to the laptop. After testing each driver, I found one that worked on one of the two network devices!

The Gateway NV5214u “Network Adapter” in Device Manager is the “Ralink 802.11N Wireless LAN Card”.  Head over to Acer’s website and select an Acer Aspire 6530 Notebook. Get the Windows XP Pro 32 bit Ralink Wireless LAN Driver Version 1.1.5.0.

On to Oracle!