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eMachine help.

N

Noobus

n00b
Joined
Sep 2, 2006
Messages
36
After an amount of time on my eMachine, all functions suddenly freeze. I can't move my mouse, use commands, etc. When I restart the computer manually, all memory is lost and I have to use Norton Ghost to restore it. But even if I do restore it, the same thing happens after a while. I'm wondering what's the problem and was wondering if you guys had help on this matter. I've managed to gather up what specs I know about my computer.

Specs::
2.70 GHz (Intel Celeron Processor)
40 GB
256 MB
Model Type: T2742

Thanks for the help.
 
What do you mean by "all memory is lost"? Are you saying that the hard drive is blank or that it just can't find the OS?
 
ryan_975 said:
What do you mean by "all memory is lost"? Are you saying that the hard drive is blank or that it just can't find the OS?
Click to expand...

What I mean is that when the computer boots up, it shows the WindowsXP screen, loads, goes black, and then restarts at the WindowsXP screen again. I assumed that to be all memory lost.
 
Noobus said:
What I mean is that when the computer boots up, it shows the WindowsXP screen, loads, goes black, and then restarts at the WindowsXP screen again. I assumed that to be all memory lost.
Click to expand...

Ahh, no everything's still there. It's just throwing a BSOD and rebooting before you get to see what it is. If you go into your system properties and disable the restart after a system crash option you'll see what the BSOD error code is. Most likely your system is either overheating or you've got some bad memory. Their could be other things wrong, but those two are usually the culprit.
 
You are not "losing memory." More likely you are getting corrupted data due the hard locking of the PC.

The PC hardlocking though could be any number of things. It could be the hard drive or memory. Both going bad could cause XP to get corrupted. I'd start first with running memtest86 and whatever disk diagnostic tool that works with you hard drive.
 
crashthenet44 said:
You are not "losing memory." More likely you are getting corrupted data due the hard locking of the PC.

The PC hardlocking though could be any number of things. It could be the hard drive or memory. Both going bad could cause XP to get corrupted. I'd start first with running memtest86 and whatever disk diagnostic tool that works with you hard drive.
Click to expand...

No matter how many times I try, I can never get MemTest to work properly. Could you give me a step by step procedure on how to use it correctly?
 
Thank you, I really needed that. Also, how do I fix an overheating problem without replacing parts?
 
Noobus said:
Thank you, I really needed that. Also, how do I fix an overheating problem without replacing parts?
Click to expand...

Cleaning the dust out the case is usually a big help, but it may be that the thermal material between the heatsinks and the chips they're cooling has gotten too old. In that case you'd need to remvove the sinks, clean off all the old thermal material with alcohol from the sinks and chips, and reapply a fresh layer of thermal material to the chips.
 
Once again, thank you. Also, I've ran the memtest86 program several times. I saw a blinking white underscore, then it just continued on with WindowsXP. Does that mean there's nothing wrong with my memory?
 
Noobus said:
Once again, thank you. Also, I've ran the memtest86 program several times. I saw a blinking white underscore, then it just continued on with WindowsXP. Does that mean there's nothing wrong with my memory?
Click to expand...

No, it should load up with a blue screen with a bunch of data on it. Make sure your computer is set to boot from the CD drive. Also check to make sure you burnt the image file's contents to the CD-R and not just copied the image file itself. You'll need an image burning app to do that (like ImgBurn).
 
Well I've burned the program onto the CD and now it shows a blue screen with testing on it. But after a while, the test just stops at 18% and I can't do anything else. How do I fix this problem?
 
Noobus said:
Well I've burned the program onto the CD and now it shows a blue screen with testing on it. But after a while, the test just stops at 18% and I can't do anything else. How do I fix this problem?
Click to expand...

How many sticks of RAM do you have in your computer? It really sounds like it's developed a bad memory module if it's hard locking Memtest. Is the system able to reboot immediately after the lockup or does it take a while before it'll successfully boot again?
 
I'm assuming it only has one stick of RAM since I only have 248 MB of it in total. Also, after the lockup, my computer doesn't reboot at all, it just stays in that state.
 
Noobus said:
I'm assuming it only has one stick of RAM since I only have 248 MB of it in total. Also, after the lockup, my computer doesn't reboot at all, it just stays in that state.
Click to expand...

Can you manually restart the computer immediately after the lockup? Or does it take a while before you can restart it?

Or more simple...

If you have another DDR RAM that you know is in good shape, swap it in for the 256 module that's in the eMachines and run Memtest again.
 
Well I can hold down the power button and it just shuts off. I can then turn it back on, but usually when I do this, it shows the WindowsXP screen, loads, goes black, and then restarts at the WindowsXP screen again. I also do not have another DDR RAM part.
 
Noobus said:
Well I can hold down the power button and it just shuts off. I can then turn it back on, but usually when I do this, it shows the WindowsXP screen, loads, goes black, and then restarts at the WindowsXP screen again. I also do not have another DDR RAM part.
Click to expand...

I'm almost certain that you have a bad memory module and it's causing disk corruption (which is why XP won't boot). If so, you'll have to get some new memory for it to fix it. Newegg sells 512MB DDR-400 for around $25-$30 shipped. It could be a bad PSU, CPU, motherboard or just overheating, but not quite as likely. Besides 256MB really isn't enought for Windows XP if you have SP2 installed, so if the new memory doesn't fix the problem you'll have up to 768MB. :D
 
I will give that a thought. On another note, I disected my eMachine and moved the heatsink out of the way to try and place new thermal paste. To my surprise, I found no where to put the paste.
 
Noobus said:
I will give that a thought. On another note, I disected my eMachine and moved the heatsink out of the way to try and place new thermal paste. To my surprise, I found no where to put the paste.
Click to expand...

You should have seen something like this
http://www.onestarsystems.nl/foto's/S478-04.jpg

You just clean off that silver area (which is the CPU) and the bottom of the heatsink with alcohol. Then reapply a very thin layer of thermal paste on the top of the CPU and reattach the heatsink.
 
Well, there was a fan right on top of it so I moved that off to the side. There was then a big chunk of metal in my way so I also moved it. Underneath was a big empty spot. That's right, A BIG EMPTY SPOT. I watched some videos helping me replace the thermal paste. My efforts were wasted when there was nothing to be found. :(
 
Noobus said:
That's what I meant. I didn't see that anywhere under the heatsink.
Click to expand...

Are you sure you've removed the CPU heatsink and not say, the Northbridge heatsink? Also if you've got a typical off the shelf system, you may just see a lot of bumpy white-ish material spread completely over the entire CPU area.
 
I opened the one closest to the back of the computer. I didn't see anything else like it in there.
 
This is similar was you should have seen inside the case. And the arrow is pointing to the heatsink for the CPU and is what you should have removed.

 
I've checked underneath it, around it, everywhere. I don't even see anything similar to that silver chip you posted earlier.
 
Depending on the kind of thermal interface material the manufacturer used, it's possible/probable that the CPU is actually stuck to the bottom of the heatsink. This happens more often than not with the Dell machines at my work. If you flip the heatsink over and see a lit of little copper pins, that's what has happened, and you can GENTLY pry the CPU off and put it back in the socket. I'll take some pictures to better illustrate what I mean, I even have a P4 mobo and cpu here.
 
xlt92explorer said:
Depending on the kind of thermal interface material the manufacturer used, it's possible/probable that the CPU is actually stuck to the bottom of the heatsink. This happens more often than not with the Dell machines at my work. If you flip the heatsink over and see a lit of little copper pins, that's what has happened, and you can GENTLY pry the CPU off and put it back in the socket. I'll take some pictures to better illustrate what I mean, I even have a P4 mobo and cpu here.
Click to expand...

Even though that's happened to me a handful of time, I didn't even think of that. Good call.
 
It's stuck underneath it?! I hope I don't break the CPU in the VERY near future...
 
This is actually a Celeron-based emachine, so it should look very similar to what you have.

Here's the board with the CPU cooler shown:


I'm guessing that this is what you see:


In which case, if you flip the heatsink over, you should see this:


If that's the case, GENTLY pry it off, I've used a popsicle stick for this.

Once it's off, lift the arm on the CPU socket up like so:


And drop in the CPU. Put the arm down, and take this time to wipe off the old thermal gunk. It should look something like this when it's clean:


Then, apply the new thermal paste, like so:


Put the heatsink back on, and clip it down:


Enjoy!

EDIT: Wow, some of those images are quite large. Hopefully you can see clearly what I mean. As far as your RAM issue goes, it's more likely that you have a bad stick, as the previous poster said. Try to pick up another, and replace the original with it.
 
Thank you very much! This will certainly take care of my heat problems. Now the only thing I have to worry about is memory problems. What other options are there besides replacing the RAM?
 
Noobus said:
Thank you very much! This will certainly take care of my heat problems. Now the only thing I have to worry about is memory problems. What other options are there besides replacing the RAM?
Click to expand...

If the memory is indeed bad, none.
 
Noobus said:
Thank you very much! This will certainly take care of my heat problems. Now the only thing I have to worry about is memory problems. What other options are there besides replacing the RAM?
Click to expand...

You could try to borrow a stick from someone and test it in your PC..short of purchasing another stick, I don't really see how else you could test it..
 
Thank you all very much. This will surely improve the performance of my computer (from what it is now). I'm sure I can find RAM somewhere.

EDIT: What kind of RAM would I need for my computer?
 
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