Hey, little question. I have an emachine . I try to install windows xp on it. When i do, it reformats, then copies the files, then restarts, then the whole process starts over again. The process never gets as far as setting up xp. i don't have a user manual. I think it is the motherboard. Not sure if i have a jumper set wrong. HELP

Hmmm, it is booting off the CD when it reboots then? Try entering bios as it is rebooting. Hitting the Del, f2, f8 and f10 keys individually during/after the POST process should get you into bios, where you may be able to assign your harddrive as the first device in the boot sequence.

If that doesn't work, try removing the CD before/during the reboot. Then perhaps it will boot from the Hard Drive ??

HTH

Have you changed any of the hardware on the machine?

That sounds like it could also be a hard drive issue. Emachines aren't known for their durability. If you have another hard drive available, I would suggest swapping it out and then installing windows.

Umm.. yeah i thought it might be the hard drive, but the funny thing is(wow this machine is wacky), but i tried another hard drive, that already had xp, and it just will not boot. then i tried the original hard drive from my emachine in another box, well it said it needed some special driver or the drive was corrupted. I am thinking the latter, but it just seems kind of weird that both the hard drive and motherboard could both be wacked.

if that hard drive was formatted and windows installed while on another computer then it isnt going to boot when hooked up to the emachine. same goes for trying to boot your original hard drive in another non emachine system.

Hard drives with OS's on them are not plug n play devices you can just swap between computers.

Here's what i suggest. Whatever make your hard drive is, go to the mfgr website and download their diagnostic utility. You put that utility program on a floppy. Use a win98 boot disk to get access to the hard drive and then pop in the floppy with the h drive mfgr utility prog on it.
Start the program and find the command to "write zeros to the hard drive".
This has the effect of putting the hard drive in the same shape as when it came from the factory, minus some wear and tear of course, but good to go.

Then make sure the win xp install cd is in the cdrom and set the bios to boot first from the cdrom and second from the hard drive.
Then reboot and let it go. When it gets to the part during win xp install that asks what type of formatting do a full format NTFS.
All should be well if the hard drive is working right.
If you do this please let us know how you made out. It will work, the only way it wont is if you dont do it right or if the hard drive is bad.
One final item, only have the minimum installed on your motherboard when installing win xp, dont have extra pci cards or usb installed, only have keyboard, mouse, video, floppy, hard drive.
If your hard drive is sata you have one extra step to do but you didnt mention its a sata drive so i will guess its ide hard drive.

Hey, thanks all, got it working. My uncle suggested(the one i got the machine from), that it might be a slave/master prob. I didn't even think much about that because the dvd drive, and hard drive were on differrent cables, and i assumed(never assume btw) that they were set properly. Well, i don't know, something was a little funky. Gosh i hate emachines! Well it's working now, and thanks all for you imput, AND MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Glad you got it working ok now.
For your future, emachines bought out a very good mfgr, i forget the name now, or that company bought emachines, i forget which way round. Either way, actual newer emachines fare very well in testing. Emachines are very good value for money at this point. Check around and you will find i am right.

Matter of fact, it was Gateway that bought out emachines. Read here:

http://news.com.com/For+eMachines,+a...3-5151124.html

The newer emachines are quite good value for the money.
However, i would never buy a pc, i always build my own.
And for those who dont want to build their own or cant or whatever, I suggest you get a friend to check out what parts to buy and pay the friend $50 to build the pc for you. Many good reasons for this, for starters you will get a good quality retail mobo and only what you want, not a bunch of stuff you didnt want but had to pay for!

alright, mabye i will do that. It's just that most machines(okay all) e-machines i have used, i have pretty much hated. Also i have a thing against non-customized computers, but yeah, some are put together alright, but nyway...