I had to reinstall a DVD program on this Gateway system. I couldn't find my the copy of PowerDVD that came with the system...

I did have a copy of the Dell restoration CD that I got for a new Dell at work though.

When I popped in the CD, it would come up and tell me that the CD could only be used on a Dell.

I poked around a bit and found a "hidden file" called custom.ini on the CD.

I copied the CD to my HD.

Then make one small change in the custom.ini and it works right away.

I don't have the CD on me at the moment... but I believe it was something like.

Vender=Dell

I changed it to

Vender=Gateway

Why would they make it so easy to circumvent?

I'll check the exact line I changed tomorrow when I get in... I just wanted to post this before I forgot.

EDIT: I just checked it. I was wrong... it wasn't "setup.ini", it was "custom.ini".