Aftermarket mobo for emachines t2042 ?

[thomash85715]

Hi: PSU troulbes on my four year old PC seem to have destroyed my MB. But when I go to tiger or newegg, I am totally bewildered by the choices. The chat guy at techsupport gave me some paramaters: micro ATX, CPU socket slot mPGA478 but that is greek to me. Emachines wants $160 for their version but it warns that all data will be lost and reload of OS is necessary. Can this be avoided? Thank you. --Tom in AZ

 

[Tmagic650]

Specifications T2042
Operating System: Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition

CPU: Intel® Celeron® Processor 2GHz (w/128KB L2 cache & 400MHz FSB)
Chipset: Intel® 845GL chipset
Memory: 128MB DDR (P2100)
Hard Drive: 40GB HDD

That 400MHz FSB (Front Side Bus) speed is tough. Most Intel boards/CPUs are running 533 and 800MHz FSB now.

I would recommend not spending too much money on this. A MSI PM8M3-V motherboard $60

ATX 350 Watt Power supply $40
Intel Celeron D, Cedar Mill CPU 533MHz FSB $60

Memory upgrade:
DDR PC3200 (DDR400) memory to 1GB $50

All this for $210. This system will out preform your old eMachines greatly. You might even be able to save you hard drive data

 

[thomash85715]

Thank you tmagic, but BBGS changed their diagnosis to hard drive failure. "This changes everything."
I am being told I must buy only IDE, not serial type which narrows the field considerably. Is this true and if so is there an adaptor card solution? I guess I better move to a different forum, but I do appreciate your analysis and suggestion. --Tom

 

[Tmagic650]

Be careful on what the BBGS is telling you. Your eMachines is old enough to have a Bestec power supply and you know the motherboard is a stripped down minimal board, both these parts are known for failure after just a year of use in some cases

 

[Tedster]

no. With a new motherboard, even an exact replacement, will require a reformat and reinstallation of your OS. You can however, salvage your data (if the HD is still good) by using it as an external or secondary drive or use it on another computer as an external to transfer data.

 

[Tmagic650]

Tedster my boy, I just successfully rebuilt 2 eMachines (new Power supply motherboard, processor, memory and CPU) and used the old eMachines C drive as is...

Boot up on the old drive, wait for Windows to load. This may take a few "cold boots" and black screen stalls. After 4 or 5 minutes both systems finally booted to the Windows log-on screen telling me that I had to Activate Windows before I could log-on. I said yes to activate. The Activation screen came up and I selected to call Microsoft.

A new number sequence key was generated. I called the automated Microsoft "person" and gave "her" the key sequence. She told me that it was not valid. A live person came on the line and told me to "change the key"... There were numbers in the key boxes already. I was told to enter the key numbers on the label stuck to the eMachines case, and hang up the phone, and restart the Activation process. I called the automated Microsoft "lady", gave her the new sequence numbers and this time the activation was successful.

After loging into an Activated Windows, I installed the new motherboard drivers and the MS Updates. I ran registry cleaners, defragged the hard drive and installed antivirus software. All the customers settings, files, folders and programs were intact and operational. The systems run fast and stable