I left my notebook running on battery and it eventually ran out of juice. Upon restarting on AC power the next day, I was prompted to choose which type of restart I wanted to use because the system did not shut down properly. I've seen this before, and chose normal startup. During the startup, which seemed normal at first, the screen quickly flashed the ominous Blue Screen of Death, followed by a blank screen with a blinking cursor.

I restarted again and was prompted to reinstall Windows, or Repair Computer. Worried about data loss, I chose repair computer. I'm fuzzy from here, but in essence, I suspected the program was about to do a system wipe, and chose to terminate the process. From there, I now get a Missing Boot.exe, and am completely unable to start or format my machine. Can't get to safe mode, can't get deep into System Recovery Options because it reports I do not have the drivers, and there is no OS available for me to search for these drivers.

I am able to review much of my system via Command Prompt, but have yet to find a way to save data or reinstall Windows without using safe mode or at least being able to have some level of Windows available, which I don't.

What's next? I don't want to pay for repairs on this $500.00 Gateway Laptop, but I do need a portable machine. Any help, steps, etc. is greatly anticipated and appreciated. Let's see how the GEEKS can help this user. Thanks! Randy