The company was formed by Rod Canion, Jim Harris, and Bill Murto, all of whom were former Texas Instruments senior managers. Since 2013, the brand is currently licensed to third parties for use on electronics in Brazil and India. The Compaq brand remained in use by HP for lower-end systems until 2013 when it was discontinued. Struggling to keep up in the price wars against Dell, as well as with a risky acquisition of DEC, Compaq was acquired for US$25 billion by HP in 2002. It rose to become the largest supplier of PC systems during the 1990s before being overtaken by Dell in 2001. Compaq produced some of the first IBM PC compatible computers, being the second company after Columbia Data Products to legally reverse engineer the IBM Personal Computer. My questions is: if a legitimate copy of Windows 7 does not cooperate with the hardware, how can I know if a legitimate copy of Windows 10 will cooperate with the hardware? I'm concerned that if I just buy a copy of Windows 10, that Gateway will still want their cut, and their hardware will tell the OS that it's not a legitimate version.Desktops, notebooks, servers, telecom equipment, softwareĬompaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. I would prefer to just buy Windows 10, and circumvent Gateway entirely.

However, Windows 10 has recently been released, and upgrades on it are also $100+ dollars. To get a copy of Gateway's OS, I would have to pay something like $100+ to access their tech support, and get a key that agrees with their hardware. The problem is that the Gateway is out of warranty, and Microsoft can't help (I've called their tech support). It was a legitimate version, but because it was not Gateway's version, the hardware insists that the OS is not 'genuine'. She did not keep the OEM install disk when she received the desktop.Īfter her OS crashed, I attempted to reinstall with a copy of Windows 7 that I purchased independent of the OEM manufacturer.

My SO bought a computer from Gateway which originally came with a copy of Windows 7 installed.

Gateway laptop windows 7