Hello Geege,

thank you for coming to IANAG after the sh.t hit the fan! Haha...just kidding, there is nothing to laugh about your system (at least it is not an eMachine!).

Ok enough goofing around, now, for any one of us to have a shot at helping you, the description of the problem has to be clear and imo, it was not so far.

So, i am going to ask you a few questions, please provide detailed, clear answers, ok?

~ Gateway E-1400 seems to be a desktop, the 120GB Samsung HD you mentioned, was that the HD that was in your system which was working fine?

~ If so, what was the HD you connected to your system? And how was it connected to your system?

~ Have you disconnected your original HD when the other HD was connected to your system?

~ What type of changes have you done to the HD jumpers? to BIOS settings? What is the current jumper settings on the HD?

~ How is/was your original HD connected to the mobo? For example: The HD is connected to the mobo via IDE ribbon cable using the middle connector and the HD's jumper is in the Master-only position, etc.

~ Have you, at any point, tried resetting your BIOS settings?

Back to basics, When the HD is connected and you turn on the system, does the BIOS acknowledge the drive? Does its info look accurate? Is the related BIOS setting set to 'Auto Detect', if not what is it set to?

This should provide us quite a bit of info. Again, please try to provide answers to all to your best knowledge.