eMachine motherboard replacement HELP Please?

IBM/Lenovo has often honored repair requests on machines out of warranty a reasonable amount of time, provided the problem was a common one that related to manufacturing or engineering failures.
eMachines is now the third largest computer company in the world... in sales.. The problem with eMachines is they now charge for the warranty. Worse, out of at least 14 models with failed motherboards, they have known it was due to manufacturing defects for which they could have notified owners... or could have extended the warranty. When the warranty is one year, and the motherboards fail between 9 months and 18 months, and it happens in 20,000 machines sold, then they try to sell you a new motherboard with the dame defects for $160 to $211, something is very rong with the company.

"then they try to sell you a new motherboard with the same defects for $160 to $211, something is very wrong with the company"
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This is because they can... If you can you will, or if it can be done, it will be done

Microsoft confirmed to me today that the license died with the motherboard, no exception could be made. My reply was not so polite. Volume license version then

Yet another Emachine fried

My power supply died and fried my motheboard on my emachine (T2542). I am willing to put another non Emachine motherboard in if I can use my current processor, memory and all the other stuff. I have a new power supply. Will I be able to use my current hard drive? I need to get the data off it though. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You can buy the proper Emachines motherboard, but you will see a warning that if you install this board, you WILL lose all your data. Another way of saying this is "you will need to do a fresh install of XP using this motherboard"... "Fresh" installs of the OS always destroy all existing data

Yes, unfortunately, it's true that you will need to install a fresh copy of Windows on your hard drive. Before you do any of that, though, I would suggest finding a spare computer (or a friend who doesn't mind allowing you to connect your hard drive to their computer) so you can backup your documents beforehand. Just connect your hard disk as a slave (check the jumper and IDE cable) and copy over your data. There are certainly people you could pay to "retrieve your lost data", but why do that when you could do it yourself for free?

The information on this site may help with replacement motherboards for emachines
http://www.emachine-upgraders.info/dir1/support/t_w_series_usa_motherboards.shtml

Cheers HSC

Good link HSC... Thanks

Yes, there is the need to buy a new copy of windows XP.

Just go to NewEgg.com all the motherboards are the best. Like I said before, my motherboard only cost me $40 to 50$. Now my computer works even better than the old crappy e-machines that it used to be.

No, dont give up. Its your power supply, it might not have enough power to power all of your devices. At least that's my theory.

LOL! I got it from NewEgg.com go there and find any motherboard that can support your CPU and had a 478 socket connection.

Or one of those fine eMachines motherboard replacements... only $159.95... or $211.95 depending on model. Nice people. They.

$159.95 or $211.95 is way too much to pay for an OEM mATX mobo. But that is free enterprise in action capitalizing on people's ignorance. All the more reason for people to do their homework.

Of all the models I have seen listed with bad mobos, most of the models listed used Trigem Imperial-G/GV/GL/GLVE or the ECS L7VMM(2).
eMachine has used only 5 mobo manufacturers since its inception; Trigem, FIC, MSI, ECS and Intel.
I sure would like to know specifically which of these 14 models raybay has with the defective mobos.

ASUS P4BGV-MX, MSI 845GVM-V, PC CHIPS M963GV, ASRock P4i65G are known good replacements for the Imperial mobos and the restore disks will work and activate if you use the COA number that is located on the sticker on the box. And speaking of restore disks, I used a Dell disk (XP Home) on an old eMachine (eMonster 550) with very little effort.

Yes, there has been a rash of Trigem Imperial versions mobos biting the dust, but to group ALL models and say they are ALL junk is ludicrous. eMachines is an entry level box for entry level people with entry level experience with an entry level price. Do you REALLY expect a Core2 Duo system for 250 bucks after rebates?

Trigem used to made some decent mobo back in the early years with the Delhi-III's and the Napoli-2's. Very upgrade-able and some even over-clockable. I know a guy that still uses his eTower 266 with that originally came with an old Cyrix M-II (talk about a piece of crap for a cpu), replaced it with an AMD K-6 III+ 450 and it runs rock stable at 600Mhz.

All the new (USA) models eMachines that were released for this quarter have Intel mobos in them, either D102GGC2 or D945GCL. But in previous quarter releases they have mainly used FIC, MSI and Intel. Yes, they are OEM versions (but standard mATX's) with stripped down hardware and crippled bios'es....just like Dell, HP, Compaq, etc.
The exception to that is the T6542 with an ECS C51PVGM-M mobo. The version 0.9Q bios has lots of options, i.e, memory voltage, cpu multiplier,,,,enough to make the rig un-bootable in the hands of the inexperienced. Wonder how many calls eMachine Tech Support will get on this unit?

eMachines Inc. started in 1998 as joint venture between Korean monitor maker KDS and Korean computer manufacturer TriGem. In 2000 they went public but due to the dot com bust they started losing money. Wayne Inouye took the company private in 2001 and made the company profitable again. That's why Gateway bought eMachines in 2004 for almost 250 million bucks. Gateway was the one losing money, not eMachines, and the reason they bought eMachines was to get the Gateway products in the retail stores
like BestBuy and Circut City. Smart move for Gateway,,,it made them profitable again.

OK I've babbled enough, I found this board checking my referrer logs and had to throw in my 2 cents here. In my profile you'll see my "homepage". We have carved out a niche' for the eMachine community where little or no information existed before. Feel free to use it as a resource...

I placed another psu in the machine that died, (I posted last week). I wanted to check to see if it was the only issue, hopefully not a mb.

Nothing happens still, but I did note that the fan for the cpu does work. Does that indicate or not that the whole mb is bad?

If I do have to get another mb, and its not the same chipset, am I correct in assuming that I CAN use a regular windows xp cdrom to repair and then use the key from the emachine case? I have this other pc (where I got the psu from) that has a regular xp install. I would prefer to just transfer that over as that other machine is really choking (it uses DIMM memory!).

Though people on this forum will argue that I am wrong, We now have 273 dead eMachines in storage awaiting class action with the same symptoms. eMachines knew the hard drive would blow. They did nothing to warn you.
The power supply, hard drive, and memory are good, but the motherboard is permanently dead and not fixable on 14 eMachines models.
That solution you propose will sometimes work, depending on its quality and output... but usually not.
The version of Windows on the eMachines hard drive will NOT work on another motherboard, unless that motherboard is another eMachines motherboard of the same or similar model. The eMachines Windows XP will detect that the configuration has changed, and will lock up. Windows will search for the "tattoo" in the EPROM of the old eMachines you have. When it does not find it, it will fail to boot up, even though it is a good hard drive.
You will need a new version of Windows XP, probably costing somewhere between $139 and $199, or the UPGRADE version of Windows XP from Wal-mart, Best Buy, and other such places for $99.99. Be sure it is a version that will not wipe out the old data.
A solution that will work, but that will be costly is to buy a new motherboard and CPU combination (Tiger Direct has the PCChips board and Celeron for $69.99 plus shipping) and a full version of Windows XP (NOT the WXP OEM versions as they will WILL NOT Allow the transfer of your data, without completely wiping out your old data). You will need to check your memory to see if it will fit a new motherboard. Many new boards require DDR2 memory, whereas your model probably requires DDR memory.
You can use your existing hard drive as is only on a replacement motherboard from eMachines at a cost of $159.99 to $211.99 plus shipping.
Perhaps a better solution would be to buy a new eMachines from www.tigerdirect.com for $299 plus shipping.
Also you can use your eMachines drive in another computer, by installing it as a slave, with the original computer hard drive jumpered to Master, then drag and drop the data to the Master hard drive or a CD or Flash Drive.
If you do not need to save the data, just reformat it with an inexpensive version of Windows XP Home OEM for $89.
There are no other ways I know of that will work. In summary:
Buy a new board.
Get a new version of Windows XP.
Or
Buy a new computer then drag and drop your old data.
The old system with DIMM memory will not work. Period.
Or better yet
Build a new computer, or buy a new computer, such as Dell, Gateway, HP or other reliable brand (Not Sony), and install your old drive as a slave to recover the data.
Good luck to you. We know this is frustrating and expensive. But you are not alone... We believe that at least 50 percent of the eMachines owners of at least 14 models have or will suffer the same difficulties. And eMachines knew.
Please let us know what you did and how it all turned out.

"Perhaps a better solution would be to buy a new eMachines from www.tigerdirect.com for $299 plus shipping"...

With deals like this, who can blame any computer novice who buys an Emachines

True. True.
We see such an incredible number of failed, and worthless eMachines in our shops, that I really don't recommend any eMachines model made since the end of 2002. Other cheap computers have problems, but the motherboard failure rate makes it seem like a conspiracy.
When you consider data lost and dreams thwarted, their junk computers are a crime. When they KNOW more than half of their machines will fail, you think they should be obligated to tell their customers that.
The new eMachines at Wal-Mart and Best Buy now offer a two year warranty (maximum) but you have to pay extra for it.

What I ended up doing was:

gut the emachine.

Move the cd r/w and the dvd r/w to my older machine (A pentium 750 with 512 meg RAM, BUT with a retail version of xp).

I moved the HD to the older machine and made it a slave.

Going to use the 17" emachine monitor.

Cost = 0
Activation issues = none (had to reactivate over the net due to the hardware changes.

Will save the money towards an older laptop.

My daughter uses this for the internet mostly. It will be ok for that.

Oh and it all works!

Congratulations! This is good to know. Every time we have tried activation, Microsoft has said the Windows version we used died with the motherboard. Good work!

That is the key, "similar model".
A retail version of the mobo or a completely different manufacturer with similar hardware, i.e., same chipset, audio, video, etc., will in fact allow Windows to activate.

I still wish you could provide some of the specific 14 models with the dead mobos...

We have found very few eMachines models with the same EPROM if the motherboard is different. We have been working for a long time and a huge investment to get this thing right. Microsoft has been extremely uncooperative as has eMachines.
But it is nice to see that somebody got through to Microsoft.
When I get some time, I will make available a spread sheet of all the models... eMachines has made 279 models that we have in our database... some with Celeron, some with AMD, a few with Pentium III and Pentium IV... Nearly all the Celeron models are trouble... very few of the AMD's.
It will probably be 30 days before I can post this, as our shop was hit by water running from frozen, broken pipes for 14 hours... we have $200,000 in damage, but all the eMachine failures were spared.

Sorry to hear about the water damage to your shop.

Would certainly appreciate whatever effort you can give on these models whenever you get a chance.

Thanks, TD