Cheap emachine junk-HELP!

[Blotan Hunka]

One of my 2 towers is an emachines T2895. Recently the keyboard started lagging and then eventually would cause the tower to emit a continuous BEEP!. Then lock the machine up. Sometimes on a re-boot it would fail to boot up at all. Other times it would boot and run fine, then hours later-BEEP!. When it first started I thought that it was my wireless keyboard, because replacing it with a new one seemed to fix it for a bit, but now its doing it again. Ive read on a few tech boards that the emachines PSU's are junk and sometimes will take out the motherboard when they die.

So, some advice please. Should I just replace the PSU while the motherboard still looks like its working? Or does anybody else think something else may be wrong? I am passing familiar with the guts of the computer and could hack replacing components. My weakness is diagnostics. Ive been known to replace some working parts (at great expense) till I replace the right one.

 

[Shicomm]

My first toughts would get to the motherboard ; not directly the psu.
Did you test with just ps2 type keyboards or did you check with usb ones also ? ( if possible off course )

PSU's are cheaper then motherboards but due to the problem i don't think you should seek the problem there.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Thats what I first though too. But any search of emachines problems online all seem to point to PSU problems.

 

[fireman00]

If there is one long beep during the POST you're most likely having a PSU issue; and its not just emachines that have this problem. For 30 bucks or so you can buy one online ... they are fairly easy to swap out. Here's a good place to get started http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...sp?CatId=106&SRCCODE=WEBGOO2PSU&CMP=KNC-GOOGL

 

[Shicomm]

and even if the psu isn't the problem ; you'll have a spare if you need one

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Well..it took a dump today. I replaced the PSU but no joy. MB is probably fried.

Heres another ?. I took the HD out of the emachines and put in in a custom build. I can access everybodies files but mine. I had an XP password on the other computer and thats probably the issue. Trouble is that this tower wont let me boot off of the old HD. So I cant remove the password. Any hints?

 

[fireman00]

There are a bucket load of file password breakers out there on the 'net... buddy of mine has one that will break a 128 character encrypted file with a combination of letters (caps and lower case) and numbers in less then a day. I"ll see if I can get the name of the app from him

 

[Shicomm]

There are a few versions of bootable XP discs available that will let you access both your files and accounts.
I use those discs to backup stuff from #censored!# installs from my clients.

Seek for BartPE and you'll be surprised by what it can do

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Thanks for the help. One last ? (I hope) with the new HD installed, Im getting the blue screen of death 1-2 times a day. Any hints. It has to be something to do with the slaved HD. Everything was fine before.

 

[Shicomm]

Could be tons of things ; maybe the motherboard took a hit at your memory as well.
Check that with a util like memtest ; if it runs without errors for about 10 minutes then at least the memory is fine.

Could be an ntfs problem as well but i only have seen het ntfs/bsod problem within win2000 ( great OS btw )

 

[Blotan Hunka]

I didnt set the jumpers correctly on the HD's. I just did that so Ill see if that was the problem.