Crazy emachine problem makes no sense. Plz help.

Hi all. I'm working on a computer for a friend. I'll start with the specs

Emachine t2682
Celeron D processor, socket 478 3.0 ghz
256 mgb ram
(I think I just heard a few groans upon reading 'emachine')

Here's my general question and justification for asking it:

The comp was handed to me, saying it was not working properly, pretty vague I know. I boot it up, it boots win XP and has a few pop ups, takes about 20 minutes to get beyond the first start up pop up on the win desktop. At that point I restart it, and am met with a boot loop. Emachine logo ---> black screen--->pause--->emachine logo wash rinse repeat.

So my initial thought is 'oh well it's the HD' so I order a new hd. Plug in the HD...nothin, says there's a 'disk 01 not found' type of error. Upon reboot it just flashes the white underscore on the black background.
So I'm thinking it must be the motherboard. To process of eliminate that I remove the emachine's processor and plug it into a dell optiplex, which I know works fine because it's what I generally use to cross check parts. I also put the emachine's ram into the dell. So with the emachine processor and ram everything boots fine on a hardrive I had originally in the Dell. Both are IDE drives so I though maybe I should take the Dell's cpu and put it into the Emachine, and also try the Dell HD in the emachine.

Through process of elimination I found that the cpu from the dell would not even boot, whereas the orginal emachine cpu worked in both systems. The hardrive on the dell would not boot on the emachine: it would give a message asking me if I wanted to start windows in safe mode, regular, ect; and upon selecting a prompt, it would flash a blue screen faster than could be read and reboot and go back into boot loop with the 'how do you want to startup?' message. I snagged half a picture of the blue screen using my camera phone and it revealed that it was an dskchk / f error message, which I thought was odd since the Dell HD disk that was doing this was damn near new. Upon plugging the Dell HD back into the dell and booting I was treated to a dskchk /f automatically through win xp's startup. It said everything was fine and booted to XP just as well.

I went on to check 4 different hard drives I had laying around, all gave some various form of being unable to boot. I then checked a drive a friend had given me with a copy of ubuntu on it, I booted it on the dell to see if it would work. It didn't, but I attributed that to the Dell not having the linux kernel that Ubuntu operates off of (so I'm told). I then reformatted the drive using an external and went through the win xp install disc process. When the install finished it rebooted, didn't find the drive and started the cd back again.

I thought maybe it was the motherboard and I replaced the battery on the mobo just for laughs. Wasn't that. I replaced the IDE cables just for kicks, still won't boot any hardrive. I cross checked other sticks of ram, no go. I reset the cmos clear jumper on the mobo hoping maybe that would do something, no success.

I see no bulging capacitors or burn marks on the mobo that would suggest a burn out. I can access the bios fine, I can get it to POST the first stage but no more. The bios shows the drives as being read (the drives it says it can't find). If you pull out the ram and try to turn it on it'll beep angrily at you, which is the only way I know to test if a mother board's lost to us.

I'm at my wits ends guys. I dunno what to tell my friend. No clue whatsoever.

 

I think you may be dealing with a OEM or proprietary install
Some manf put a special partition or MBR on the pc that loads specific drivers or configurations.
Do you still have the original hd?
Do you/he have a recovery disc for that specific pc? This would really help....
Try putting the original drive back along with everything else to the original config (remeber it did boot this way even if only once)
Run a repair install or it could even be a corrupted MBR that would be fixed with the quick restore/recovery disc.
Also some manf have a recovery parttion not sure about emachines though.

Just a few ideas seeings as how your in this far already......

 

didn't see anything about a recovery partition during the partition selection in the reinstall.

I don't have any software to go about a reinstall with. Is there a downloadable copy I could access?

 

Try using another IDE cable, check your jumpers, try the Secondary IDe channel if your board has one. If the drive does not detect, check the drive on another machine to check that the drive is good.

 

As I have previously stated I changed the IDE cables. I changed the motherboard battery, Reset the CMOS and bios jumpers, cross checked four hard drives with another system. Changed out the cpu with another cpu and cross checked that, made sure the cables were intact once more. Still no dice.

 

Once you are back to your original config you could try a linux live cd --just to see if the PC will boot off the original HD-- at least you may recover the info

A long shot but you may get lucky and be able to do a repair from ANY xp cd ...give it a shot.

 

Just want to clear up one thing. If you put a hard drive on which XP was installed on another computer into the Emachine it won't boot because XP was configured for the original comp. So when you say you tried 4 HD in the Emachine and they wouldn't boot that would be normal. They should be recognized in the BIOS though.

You could try using one of those 4 spare drives to install XP while attached to the emachine using the validation code off the sticker on the emachine case.

 

If any one of those hard drives are plugged into the emachine and I go through an install, which I tried on each of those hard drives, of xp it will reboot as if it were going to continue phase two of the install, and then get into a boot loop, where it POSTs the first part and then it flashes black screen and boot loops.

 

ok this is just the damndest thing. I ripped a

Seagate Barracude ATA IV 80 gig Model ST3800021A

HD off an old dell a friend had laying around. Dunno if this has anything to do with why it successfully boots to windows but it says ' This drive is manufactured by Seagate of OEM distribution. ect;' so anyway yeah it boots up. I'm wondering why or how for that matter. Any insight?

 

Poor guy has posted this problem at another web forum that I am also a member of and has not found any satisfaction there either.

 

<puts tail between legs>

 

The only thing I can say is that DELL does add a tiny partition to their HD for recovery. (Sometimes?....it did to my dad's 2400, a few years ago). It is generally seen as an <unknown> format by DOS. I believe if you were to delete partitions on a DELL computer, using something like FDISK, there would still be a couple of MB partition that would load trying to troubleshoot. Probably linux or something that would go under the DOS radar.

I know eMachines are weird, but on the new HD was there an install CD that had a "prepare HD for OS install" option? Does it do anything to help the BIOS recognize the drive?

Just a last ditch effort to give you some ideas.

 

So I found an OEM copy of windows XP home edition. Installation ran better than I thought it would, it actually booted into xp. I went to install the drivers for the comp, which ran smoothly, and went to reboot. Upon reboot I was treated to the POST, the XP logo, the blue bar for XP and then a black screen, 10 minutes of nothing. The only way I can see to even access XP is a fresh install every time. Any ideas?

granted the OEM did work better than the reg. copy of XP. But still no dice.