WARNING: - Only read the following if you want to hear a long winded story about my PC and its problems. About 6 months ago I made the mistake of buying an emachines emonster 500 - 500MHz Pentium III, 64Meg Ram, Voodoo 3, 13 Gig HD. Let me preface this by saying that emachines absolutely SUCK! About 3 months ago I started having power supply problems - the machine would:- a) lock up b) shutdown and reset spontaneously c) Once shutdown, would continuosly try and restart - "pulsing". I contacted emachines, and they took 3 months to send me a new power supply. I received the power supply yesterday, but before I could install it, the computer froze, and now I cannot get it to boot. It starts, and I hear the HD tick over but that is all. I installed the new power supply, but the problem persists. Any ideas?? ------------------ Maybe all the rulers are wrong. Current Rocket's Salary & Contract Info
that sucks. Did it freeze the last time before you changed the power supply, or after? Fear not, though. "Power" problems can be simple sometimes. I suggest this troubleshooting method: 1. Simple test first. Eliminate card seating and obvious wiring as a problem. Reseat all peripheral cards. Reseat all power cables to those peripheral cards/devices. Check you wiring to the On/Off switches on your chassis. Try a different Keyboard. Bad seating, wiring, and keyboard can all have the symptoms your describe. Try booting 2. Drastic test second, don't trust any hardware. What you need to do is try to narrow down the problem to a specific hardware card/device/chip/motherboard via process of elimination. Eliminate all peripheral devices as problems by pulling them out. (NOTE: LABEL ALL WIRING FIRST!!!!! You might want to draw a picture.) Pull out your sound card, modem, video (you can hear it boot properly), unplug CD-ROM, and yes, if you have onboard RAM, pull out the extended memory chips. What you are trying to do is take every non-essential boot device off your motherboard and unplug them from the power supply. Try booting. 3. With a good power supply, good keyboard, good floppy and good memory chips you should be able to boot to a floppy. You shouldn't even require a harddrive, and possibly any memory chips if your BIOS allows that. If any of these things worked, replace your parts one at a time until you find the bad hardware. If none of these things worked, it might be time to blame the motherboard, and send that in for replacement. One other thing you might try is do research on your BIOS. The BIOS will beep in a different cadence for different errors. Do you get Beeps or just HD clicks? good luck
Thanks heypartner - I will try that when I get home tonight. The crash ocurred while I was still using the old power supply - I had not installed the new one, so that rules out me as the direct cause of the problem! I can't remember if there are any beeps when I turn it on. Let me ask you this - if the computer boots using a floppy, does that mean the problem is probably my hardisk? Also, since I get exactly the same problem with the new power supply, does that eliminate it as the cause of the problem? Danilo - not sure what size the power supply is, but knowing emachines, it was probably a few watts undersized. ------------------ Maybe all the rulers are wrong. Current Rocket's Salary & Contract Info
well, you are definitely narrowing it down. If you successfully boot in any fashion, you are definitely eliminating the power supply, keyboard, motherboard and memory as problems. If you find symptoms that only when trying to boot to harddrive do you experience, you can have incorrect BIOS settings, as well. What is really hard to explain is the "pulsing" you describe. I have never heard of that.
solution: ------------------ Ceo of the Walt Williams fan club. Web site coming soon atheistalliance.org
Well - I may have solved the problem. I took the PC to my work IT guy and in a matter of 5 minutes, he had pulled out the graphics card, and replaced it with a generic one he had lying around - guess what - computer booted first time! He also happened to have a spare 3dfx Voodoo 3 lying around at home that he went and got for me. Thanks for all your help guys - my only concern now is whatever caused the card to fail. I realize it could have just been a bad card, or it could have been the faulty power supply. I recently installed a Pinnacle TV capture card - any possibility it caused the graphics card to fail? Now I can relax and look forward to getting my DSL activated on December 20! ------------------ Maybe all the rulers are wrong. Current Rocket's Salary & Contract Info
More news - just got off the phone to emachines and SURPRISE SURPRISE they refuse to send me a new video card. Consider this - I have owned this computer for a little over 6 months. For 3 months I have had the use of the machine severely limited by power systems problems, while I waited for them to send me a replacement part. Now, after being resourceful enough to figure out that my graphics card is also bad, they want me to :- a) Uninstall my CDRW b) Uninstall the borrowed Graphics card and replace with the bad one c) Uninstall my TV Capture card d) Uninstall my firewire card e) Back up all personal data from the HD Then I have to post the the unit to them (at my expense) so they can replace the graphics card and "process" the unit, which takes them 7 to 10 days (not gauranteed) and post to me by surface mail. Sircharlesfan - I don't want to put a dampener on your Christmas present - yours will probably turn out just fine. But DO NOT expect any sort of product support from them. When I asked their Tech Support staff what I was supposed to do, having waited for 2 months for a power supply, they told me "your best option is to go and buy one yourself". I'm not sure how much you're unit cost, but the Dell deal for $850 (PIII 800, 3D AGP Graphics, 20 GIG, 64 Meg RAM) is pretty hard to beat. Also, if you think you might need any product support, sign up for the emachines extended warranty, and get "on site" repairs. It will be well worth it. ------------------ Maybe all the rulers are wrong. Current Rocket's Salary & Contract Info
Think before you take the time to send all this crap back. A new 16MB AGP OEM Voodoo3 can be had for about $65. And I'm sure that's what eMachines wants you to do, too... Heck, I have one lying around here collecting dust that I'd send to ya, but I'm about to build another box with it. ------------------ If you like larger booties, Domanique Sachsa would be on that list as well. --Jeff of SaveMeSomeBooty.com fame in the BBS Hangout forum (hope the man doesn't run for a political position - he's dead meat)
Davo, hope you put that Nuggets game on CD before all this happened Smeg ------------------ In 1993-94 Mugsy Bogues averaged more boards for the season than Mo is this season!!
My dad purchased one of the very first eMachines, and he's had no problem with them... I hope my eMachine doesnt screw up too bad...I'm getting a 700mhz celeron, dvdcdrw, 20 gig for xmas. ------------------ Who's ya daddy?
Oh gosh, don't get me started on emachines . . . so tiny and the power supply is atrocious (I've changed more than a few). You could have any number of problems. It sounds like one thing leads to another, leads to another and so on. If the fan went out on the old power supply, you could've been having heat buildup. Lockups can be lots of things (sometimes software), but heat and RAM are the two biggies. If you can get the system to post (power on, give monitor a signal and check RAM), you'll be in business. That doesn't rule out RAM problems, but at least you'll be closer to a solution. I'd doubt it's the processor. In my experience, I've never seen a bad Intel chip. The HD is probably not a factor as well as the PC should post even if the IDE controller or hard drive was bad. What you now have is an inability to get a monitor signal. This can be many things, but check the graphics card -- like heypartner said, reseat all the cards and I'd suggest doing the same with the RAM as well. It sounds to me like you could've had a power supply failure which caused some strange anomalies. It may have (if the fan went out) caused heat to build up, harming other components in the PC. If you can get it to post, see what kind of problems you have after that. I doubt you have access to these parts, but if you did, this is the order I'd suggest in trying to deduce the problem. If it's the same stuff, try switching RAM. If you can obtain another processor, try that. Then try switching vidcard (probably not it). Each time you do this, try to eliminate one thing as the cause. It could go all the way to the motherboard (which wouldn't shock me). Although I've learned never to rule out RAM as a cause of anything Also look at your heat buildup. Make sure all the fans, etc. are working. Heat can cause lockups and harms components. ------------------ "I am who I am, who I am, well who am I?" -- Dave Matthews Band "Dancing Nancies"
Smeg - you wouldn't believe it but I was in the process of encoding the last segment of the Denver game so I could then burn the CD - AND THAT IS WHEN IT CRASHED. Fear not my friend, as soon as I got home last night with the borrowed graphics card, I burnt the CD. I have it with me now and will post today DoD - thanks, that is pretty well what I ws going to do. Where did you get that price - the cheapest I found sofar was about $70 + shipping. Actually, what I am going to do is call them back a week before my warranty expires (in 6 months time) and tell them I am sending the machine back. They already told me that I won't get the same machine back, so maybe I will get a brand new one then. Davo ------------------ Maybe all the rulers are wrong. Current Rocket's Salary & Contract Info
davo, Go to www.pricewatch.com and look on the left-hand side for "Multimedia" and then "Video Cards". ------------------ If you like larger booties, Domanique Sachsa would be on that list as well. --Jeff of SaveMeSomeBooty.com fame in the BBS Hangout forum (hope the man doesn't run for a political position - he's dead meat)
