Avoid Emachines!

I feel as in mid 04' when the company underwent some company changes, owners etc. That was when Emachines started and continuity became worse. Before that Emachines where the best bang for your buck in any scenario, but as many have pointed out they are junk now.


What I am getting at is that in the past they where very reliable but now they are just junk.

Tvcrcaman

To Luvhuffer and Raybay, you're both right depending on how system specific any given computer builder makes their installation/recovery CDs. With the "sysprep.exe" tool and an appropriate number of product licenses and keycodes purchased from Microsoft, the said builder can make their CDs as model number and hardware build specific as they want. Drivers, Programs, Applications, even optional Windows components can be specific to a particular model's recovery CD(s). Or they can be as generic as they'd like as well. As far as PROM's, EPROM's, and EEPROM's go though. Raybay? PROM's are the progammed one time only chips. EPROM's and EEPROM's can be reset or changed. PROM stands for Programmable Read Only Memory, EPROM stands for Erasable Programmable etc,etc. EEPROM, Electronically Erasable etc, etc. Bios's, chipset's, and boot up initialization are comprised of examples of all three. In today's new HD TV's I can go into factory menus and change certain settings, reset others to default, and others are set when the IC's are initially created and shipped to the manufacturers. For example I programmed a Sony 32" I recently worked on to think it was a higher model set with more features than it initially have, but I had a 37" Philips plasma that I had two similar logic boards for, one was for a 32" the other was for a 37". The section that contained the data that discerned the differences between the screen sizes was burnt into the PROM from the factory as wasn't able to be altered. I hope this helped some, I ran across your posts while reading about another matter...take care...

David

I also work with the elderly and the disabled, repairing and building computer systems. I use http://www.retrobox.com to buy used Compaq 800+ MHz computer systems, that I upgrade by adding additional memory, a CD/DVD R/W, and a larger hard drive. I can do this and make a small profit for $250...

You can study these Emachines failures all you want, using the best engineering techniques, and staff. To me, this is a futile effort at best. All this mess comes down to making the most money, for the smallest investment. Isn't this exactly what we all do, to a certain extent?

How do I check a power supply? Should it run when I plug it in to 110 volts? Where do I check the voltage?

Use a volt meter. It depends on what kind of power supply it is. If it's a standard ATX power supply,you need to take a small piece of wire and connect from the green wire to a black wire on the 20/24 pin connector. Then turn it on/plug it in. What makes you think it is bad? Can you boot up to the desktop. If so you can use a diagnostic program like Sisoft Sandra, or Everest, to check your voltages in windows. The voltages should be within the 10% range of rated voltages. 10% is usually what the makers say, but most people including myself use 5% as a guide. Volt meters are cheap. You can pick one up for $5 or $10 bucks, or if you're unsure how to use it you can pick up a power supply tester for around $15.

Standard ATX PSU
Black=ground
Red=+5V
Yellow=+12V
Orange=+3.3V
Blue=-12V
Grey=PSU Sensor
Green=off/on switch

New ps is a Hipro ATX H11-1010. I can plug in power cord to it and nothing happens. I thought the fan would come on. There is an off/on switch and I push the "0" down and nothing. Shouldn't a ps plugged into 110 volts do something with no wires running to the computer?

A PSU should not power up like that, if it did it would be faulty.
A PSU will only power up (when not connected to motherboard) by shorting the green wire to any black.

I will jump the black wire to a green wire and see if ps comes on. If so, will check voltages. If they are ok, must be something else wrong.

What exactly are you trying to achieve?
Testing a PSU the way you seem to be trying will only tell you if it powers up or not. PSUs are very difficult to fully test and they can often only show symptoms under certain circumstances. For example, a PSU giving low voltage outputs will normally only show that problem up when it is heavily loaded.

If it is a Bestec 250 watt PSU then believe me don't bother with it, they are crap.
I know what I am talking about as I spent almost 15 years in the electronics trade and I'm one of the few people that is able and willing to actually fix a PSU.

The emachine had a Bestec ATX-250-12E REV7.

In that case don't bother testing it just bin it. Those PSUs are crap and not worth the effort.

Thanks. You people are a really big help. I am not computer literate for sure.

I think rik pretty much covered the bases for you. Especially about trashing the bestec. Power supplies are the cheapest component inside the case, but the only component that has the ability to destroy all the other components. The rule with power supplies should be when in doubt toss it out. Although they have constant voltage levels, they are designed to adjust the amperage (current) based on need. Just testing the voltages can tell you if it's bad from that perspective, but good voltages are not necessarily indicative of a working one delivering adequate current..

I too have a T2200 that has died. It would not boot. The power supply was replaced. Looking at in from the inside, when I try to power it up it does nothing. The MOBO does have a green light on it so I guess this indicates power is going to it but I get nothing else. The PSU does not come on, no beep codes, nothing. Just sits there. I have verified all plugs are plugged in properly, I tried reseating the RAM, tried reseating the CPU. Any idea what it might be (MOBO, CPU, Memory)???

If you have a good read of all the posts in this thread you will see that it pretty much everyone with the same problem is having to replace both the PSU and the motherboard.

Ok. PSU was replaced recently so I guess its on to a new MOBO. Thanks.

"I too have a T2200 that has died. It would not boot. The power supply was replaced. Looking at in from the inside, when I try to power it up it does nothing. The MOBO does have a green light on it so I guess this indicates power is going to it but I get nothing else. The PSU does not come on, no beep codes, nothing. Just sits there. I have verified all plugs are plugged in properly, I tried reseating the RAM, tried reseating the CPU. Any idea what it might be (MOBO, CPU, Memory)???"


For ALL Emachines problems, no matter what:

Always replace the MOTHERBOARDS AND POWER SUPPLIES... Then troubleshoot any other problems. We have said this over and over and over again! No model Emachines is special, they are all susceptible to being crap

I recommend to never buy an emachines computer from there. the "W" instead of "T" on the front of the model # is the warning sign. My parents have a emachine computer from walmart and the hard drive is slow. the system bus on the mobo is slow, and it has a 2.8Ghz Celeron! Here's the funny thing, my old Pentium III 930Mhz system with XP professional always outperforms the walmart computer with the 2.8 Ghz Celeron with XP home! No kidding! My newer system with a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz CPU and Asus P4B533-VM Mobo really leaves the walmart computer behind! Buying other things from the electronics dept besides computers is okay... for things such as wireless cards and Linksys routers and a few other things. As a matter of fact, the wireless card in my p4 system is from walmart, and I've never had a problem out of it.

All are warning signs. The T-machines are just as failure prone as the W-machines.
In fact, you can now get the W-machines with a two year warranty instead of a one year warranty if you pay for it.
The W-machines are, as far as I know, Wal-mart versions of the T-machine. We can find no differences in the motherboard.s
The hard drives are good. It is the motherboard that is faulty... you can expect that many eMachines will totally fail before the end of year three... and usually during early year two.
There are 14 models of eMachines we have identified that have a failure rate exceeding 56 percent.
We are working with Wal-Mart and Gateway to force the issue with eMachines.

People that know very little about Pc's only know that "the higher the GHz".."the better the computer".

This obvioulsy isn't true..but is just a common misconception that earns large pc companies millions.