Is my 7426GX really toast?!

. running unplugged = cpu is being throttled down, running "cooler"
. before anything, i would take the comp apart, do a good cleaning and applying new thermal paste.
. u r NOT the only one in this area - search the gateway forum with m6805, ur model ... loads of instructions and inputs as how to take the comp apart and clean and resuccitate it

welcome to the forum

cheers ...

Sounds like a motherboard problem. From experience, my suggestion is to stay away from the 7400GX series motherboards, because all you may find are old ones on ebay that will do the same thing. Go with the 7500GX/mx7500 AMD series motherboards and you can probably re-use all components from your 7426GX.

Yeah this eMachines/Gateway series based on Arima W730-K8 are really junk. Very unreliable in many ways. I still have my M6805, but it is in rough shape with many issues. On the other hand, my 3 yr old Dell Inspiron 9300 is in like-new condition. I doubt I'll ever buy Gateway/eMachines/Arima again.

Here's a little list of issues I've had with mine, off the top of my head.
-Power jack breaking
-Bad Cardbus chip causes problems with Audigy Notebook
-Random reboots
-Very picky about RAM
-flickering LCDs. I've gone thru 2 LCDs myself and my sister had flickering too.
-cracking hinges
-dead DVDROM
-initial horrible XP SP2 BIOS issues (they actually patched that though!)
-internal circuitry that gets noisier as it ages (squeeling electrical inductors, probably)
-nonexistent driver downloads and updates

Mine died in the exact same manner. I turned it off after work tossed it in the truck and powered on maybe a few times after beating on it... I know smart.

I got a new(used) board from ebay and it works fine. The only problem I am starting to see the overheat power off thing. It seems like the cpu is cool when I run CPU-Z's HWmonitor. It does show my hard drive staying above 100F even idle.

I use XP and linux and has powered off on both and even moments after post.

I do think it is a failing power pack now that I replaced the drive. (I did spill coke on the ac power pack while at school 2 years ago. Soaking it internally :P ) I being one of the laptop repair techs at work I had downtime to learn disassembly and reassembly quite well for the 7422gx and other series of this chassis.

Cooling is great still has wonderful air flow with the heat ducts.

If another board dies sadly as much use this machine has given me, I might go for a toshiba I been looking at. (if they are any better)

I am having the identical problem with my Gateway 7426GX. It's almost exactly four years old and had been running just fine. The problem started several weeks ago. The notebook would suddenly shut off without warning. It started off happening every few days and got progressively worse until now it may run for a few hours or a few minutes.

I do notice that, just before it shuts off, I can hear the fan rev up for about four or five seconds. Also, it only happens when I am plugged into AC. If I unplug the notebook, I can work without incident until the battery runs down. But this is no way to work, so I'd like to figure the solution or find out whether I need to get a new PC.

I suspect that the problem is either dust or a bad power supply. I've blown air into as much as I can access. I have not been able to locate instructions as to which screws to remove to open the machine so I can blow air over all components. If anyone has some information on that, I'd appreciate the info.

As to the power supply, I would think that the PC would automatically switch to battery if the power supply shut off. This is what happens in a building power outage. That does not seem to be happening in this case. However, I do not know how the various power states work, so there may be an explanation for this. The Gateway replacement power supply is very expensive, so I'd like to make sure that this is the problem before ordering one.

Does anyone have any answers to this problem? I contacted Gateway several days ago but, other than the acknowledgement, I've gotten nothing from them. But have never found their support to be at all helpful, even when the product was under warranty.

I would appreciate whatever feedback I could get.

Thanks in advance,

Jim

Don't waste your time with a power brick. It is not the problem. The issue is the motherbaord power supply circuit. It goes bad over time, it was probably spec'd too tight from the engineers.

I have replaced a few boards on these units. Any board from a 7405GX, 7422GX, or 7426GX will work. 75xx baords will more than liklely fit, but there are some design changes and chipset variations.