Emachine T2042

[ariesinxs63]

Hello All,
I am new to your forum ,and have seen some great info here.
I have a Emachine T2042. I took it for repair when it stopped working ,and was told the power supply ,and motherboard are shot. My question is if I buy another power supply ,and motherboard that are identical to the ones that are shot will my pc work? The harddrive is good ,and I still have the restore disks that came with it.

 

[nickc]

if u are going to repair get better for both, or atleast a better PSU as that is the reason u are having to repair now.

 

[Herbssat]

Good evening. I do not know much about that E machines model that you just mentioned. Can you give some specs? Whatever you do; do not put the same power supply back in it that came with it. Most likely it is a Bestec atx 1250-E that is bad news. In most cases it overvolts and takes the motherboard with it. It seems to be very destructive. I have fixed 2 E-machines in the past 2 weeks, same problem every time.My professional opinion is to change the power supply to at least 300 watts with overvoltage protection and upgrade the motherboard socket while in the process.If an older Intel socket, upgrade to socket 775 m-atx as they are plentiful. The downside is that you will have to upgrade your cpu but they are cheap. You will not be able to use your restore cd as you will need an oem copy of windows to install. The average cost to repair it will be higher but in the end you will end up with a much better machine. If you are looking for the cheaper way out, go the first route.

 

[ariesinxs63]

E Machine T2042

I am thinking of fixing it for my son. I only want it to work. I do want to replace the power supply ,but thought maybe if i put the same mother board in that came with it ,I could get it to run the OS loaded on the hard drive,and would not have to buy new OS.

 

[Herbssat]

You should be fine as long as it is replaced with the same board that came out of it.The key thing to remember is not to put the Bestec power supply back in it. Get one from Fortron Source, Enermax, Coolermaster, Antec or sparkle. I have found the Fsp group to make reasonable and reliable power supplies.

 

[jbausch]

Hello...I am workin on the same problem. Were you able to switch
mobo and use the restore CD to reactivate the OS? I wasn't able to do this. The system says "operating system not found". I hope you had better luck.

 

[Herbssat]

Good Morning. Did you replace the motherboard with the exact motherboard that came out of the system with the E machine Bios? The restore cd will in most cases only work with a motherboard that it identifies. However; I have heard of some that got the restore cd to work with a near identical chipset.

 

[Rik]

Provided you fit the exact model of mobo it shoul work fine.

Do not however fit a standard replacement psu. The older emachines use bestec ones that are out and out cheap rubbish and about as reliable as public transport.
Put a good quality 300watts or more one in and you should be fine. With psu's, spend as much as you can reasonably afford. You really do get what you pay for when it comes to psu's.

 

[raybay]

The T-2042 is one of the 14 eMachines models that has an extremely high failure rate. Defects in the motherboard cause the power supply to eventually fail, not the other way around.
You can only get that hard drive and recovery/restore set to work if you buy a replacement board from eMachines for $159.95. They have now acknowledged the power supply also fails, and will try to sell you one of those, as well, for $65. But it is far wiser to buy a good power supply from one of the online vendors. The problem with this decision is that within two years, the eMachine motherboard will again fail beyond repair.

What is even smarter is to buy another board, and a copy of Windows, and a hard drive if you need to rescue the data on your old one. You can install the old drive as a slave then drag and drop or use rescue softeware to save your data and douments.
eMachines has the highest failure rate of desktops of any manufacture since 1999. Although the motherboard and power supply are bad, you can expect the hard drive, CPU, CPU fan and heat sink, optical drives, modem, and memory are still good.
You can buy a motherboard that will use those devices for under $48, which gives you enough money left over to buy an OEM version of Windows XPH for $84. Soon you are back in business, but you still have an old computer.
You can buy a new Lenovo (IBM) with new cpu, motherboard, Windows, optical drives, memory, etc, for $399 and there are many other deals.

Stay away from PCChips boards which are the most common replacement for the eMachine board.

 

[you use a 286]

this has peviously happened to my computer, and replacing the power supply seemed to work

 

[Rik]

This is an emachine we are talking about, replacing just the psu will most definately not work.

 

[raybay]

Wow! Very Rare for a T-2042...
Please let us know if the board makes another power supply go bad. If not, that will be good news.

 

[Herbssat]

Very informative info Raybay. Where did you go to find out about the failure rate for particular models. I got a W-1600 in today that looks to be the same problem. Lately I have been the Emachines service center seems like.

 

[raybay]

We are involved in a possible legal action against eMachines, because they have known about this issue for so long and have done nothing about it to warn users so they do not lose valuable data.
We have hired a tech laboratory to test the motherboards with a number of power supplies over time... as there remains disagreement over whether the power supply or the motherboard fails first.
I have 240 eMachines in a barn in Colorado... much to the disgust of my friends.

 

[Rik]

You use a 286! To what pc are you referring to? A T2042 or something else?
I have looked at your profile and see no pc specs!