Another Clueless F**k question...

[Ed Cregger]

I have a two year old eMachines T6000 with AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1 GB RAM and
the stock 160 GB hard drive.

I replaced the original operating system with an OEM copy of XP Pro, running
SP2.

Every once in a while, instead of booting at start up, it would flash the
BIOS icon for eMachines and then go to a black screen with a flashing white
flat cursor line in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Now it is
doing it for five or six restarts until it finally brings up Windows XP Pro
SP2.

Any ideas as to why it is doing this? The drive seems fine and passes muster
with various analyzer programs. I'm stumped.

Ed Cregger

 

[John Weiss]

I have a two year old eMachines T6000 with AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1 GB RAM and
the stock 160 GB hard drive.

I replaced the original operating system with an OEM copy of XP Pro, running
SP2.

Every once in a while, instead of booting at start up, it would flash the
BIOS icon for eMachines and then go to a black screen with a flashing white
flat cursor line in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Now it is doing
it for five or six restarts until it finally brings up Windows XP Pro SP2.

Any ideas as to why it is doing this? The drive seems fine and passes muster
with various analyzer programs. I'm stumped.

Have you tried cleaning and resetting HD, Gfx, and other card/cable connectors?

How about the BIOS battery? If the machine is turned off for a good part of
the day, it may be ready to give up the ghost...

Did you do a clean install of XP, or an "upgrade" install? If the latter, you
may want to back up your data and try a clean install.

What drive analyzers did you use? Did you use the HD mfgr's app?

 

[Ed Cregger]

Have you tried cleaning and resetting HD, Gfx, and other card/cable
connectors?

How about the BIOS battery? If the machine is turned off for a good part
of the day, it may be ready to give up the ghost...

Did you do a clean install of XP, or an "upgrade" install? If the latter,
you may want to back up your data and try a clean install.

What drive analyzers did you use? Did you use the HD mfgr's app?

Thank you very much for things to look for. I wouldn't be surprised if it is
the backup battery for the BIOS. In fact, now that you mentioned it, I did
adjust something in the Bios today and it didn't seem to take (enabling USB
search on boot up). It was doing this long before I messed with the Bios
today, incidentally.

I'll give the hard drive a good cleaning session, but it behaves as though
it is never getting to the hard drive before the black screen/flashing
cursor shows up. Still, proper HD maintenance is a good idea anyway and
can't hurt anything.

I was using Iolo's v 7 of System Mechanic Pro, not anything fancy for HD
analysis, if you can call it that.

Thanks again.

Ed Cregger

 

[JAD]

Thank you very much for things to look for. I wouldn't be surprised if it is the backup
battery for the BIOS. In fact, now that you mentioned it, I did adjust something in the
Bios today and it didn't seem to take (enabling USB search on boot up). It was doing
this long before I messed with the Bios today, incidentally.

Checksum error at start up?

I'll give the hard drive a good cleaning session, but it behaves as though it is never
getting to the hard drive before the black screen/flashing cursor shows up. Still,
proper HD maintenance is a good idea anyway and can't hurt anything.

I suspect the boot sector has errors. look at the event viewer (system)

 

[Bill]

I have a two year old eMachines T6000 with AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1 GB RAM and
the stock 160 GB hard drive.

I replaced the original operating system with an OEM copy of XP Pro, running
SP2.

Every once in a while, instead of booting at start up, it would flash the
BIOS icon for eMachines and then go to a black screen with a flashing white
flat cursor line in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Now it is
doing it for five or six restarts until it finally brings up Windows XP Pro
SP2.

Any ideas as to why it is doing this? The drive seems fine and passes muster
with various analyzer programs. I'm stumped.

Ed Cregger

First thing I'd look after replacing the bios battery
would be the power supply. Emachines have a rep for weak
power supplies.

Bill

 

[Ed Cregger]

First thing I'd look after replacing the bios battery
would be the power supply. Emachines have a rep for weak
power supplies.

Bill

Thanks, Bill. I'll do that.

Ed Cregger

 

[Ed Medlin]

I have a two year old eMachines T6000 with AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1 GB
RAM and the stock 160 GB hard drive.

I replaced the original operating system with an OEM copy of XP Pro,
running SP2.

Every once in a while, instead of booting at start up, it would flash
the BIOS icon for eMachines and then go to a black screen with a
flashing white flat cursor line in the upper left hand corner of the
screen. Now it is doing it for five or six restarts until it finally
brings up Windows XP Pro SP2.

Any ideas as to why it is doing this? The drive seems fine and passes
muster with various analyzer programs. I'm stumped.

Ed Cregger

It could be a lot of things Ed, but I would first look at the PSU since
that is a known weak area in the eMachine's design.

Ed

 

[Ed Cregger]

It could be a lot of things Ed, but I would first look at the PSU since
that is a known weak area in the eMachine's design.

Ed

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll break out the DVM and see what happens with
the output voltage of the PSU.

Ed Cregger