This is my first time posting and I'm not very knowledgable when it's comes to computers, but I'll try my best to tell you what's wrong and hopefully someone can help me out.

I have a Gateway 200ARC Laptop Computer. About 4 months ago, I had a error messgae that displayed, stating basically a driver/file/program (something) was missing. I contacted Gateway, Microsoft and several others to help me, I was told to Reinstall Windows XP. Which i did. No one told me once i reinstalled Windows XP I would not have all the drivers I had before.

My problems now, I seem to be missing several drivers and I don't know how to determine what they are. I bought this laptop used from someone, I don't have the orginal CD's with the software on it. Once I go to the Gateway website and enter my information about the laptop it gives me several drivers/ software to download but nothing seems to be what i need to get my laptop working again.

Can someone tell me what these terms mean so maybe i can locate the correct drivers or software to download?? These are all located in my Device manager under 'Other Devices' all with a yellow question mark next to them. (i was told these are what i am missing to make the laptop run correctly)

* Base System Device
* Base System Device
* Ethernet Controller
* Multimedia Audio Controller
* Network Controller
* SM Bus Controller
* Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller

Thanks for help in advance!!

If you would give us some additional information, we will be able to help you better: the first bit that we need is the serial number of the machine. look on the bottom, on a gateway they usually start in 00, second, we need to know is you have access to a device to move the drivers to the computer in question. Is a flash drive recognized when you plug in to one of the USB ports? If not, do you have an operable cd burner?

you can pm me with the serial number if you wish, however this is just to access the original configuration of your machine and obtain the correct drivers. you can also accomplish this from a different machine, and obtain the correct list of drivers. here is the link serial number once you have the correct NIC driver installed the rest can be downloaded directly to the computer.