OEM XP Home won't work after new mb!

[Guest]

The BIOS chip is a rectangular chip usually lying in a horizontal position
near the bottom of the motherboard. It will be black in color, sitting in
it's own socket. It is a EPROM chip. It will have Award, Phoenix, or AMI
stamped on it, and should have a BIOS version #.

It can be removed from it's socket by gently prying upward on the 'short'
sides, using a non electrically conductive tool. You need to pry gently
working back and forth between the sides until you can pull it out using your
thumb and forefinger, or using an EPROM removal tool.

Once it comes loose, don't touch the 'legs' at all, you can short it out and
erase the data if you do. Set it on an anti-static mat. I would wear latex
gloves to keep from touching it.

Before installing it in the new motherboard, disconnect all power leads to
motherboard, remove the CMOS battery, and install the chip by pushing it
gently into the socket working left to right, making sure NOT to install it
upside down.
Once its seated firmly in the socket, reinstall the CMOS battery, replace it
if it's below 3 volts. I'd then reset the CMOS using the onboard jumper.

Reconnect the power leads to the motherboard and power up the system, at
POST screen, press Delete to enter the BIOS, under 'Standard BIOS setup', set
Time and Date, and drives.
Under HDD Detection, set it to Auto with LBA support if disk is less than
137 gigs, 48 bit LBA if disk is over 137 gigs.

Hit ESC to return to main menu, use arrow keys to select 'Load Optimized
Defaults', press Enter to accept. Arrow down to 'Save Changes and Exit',
press Enter.

At'Write to CMOS?' prompt, Type Y and press Enter.

Once system boots to Windows Desktop, do a normal Windows shut down and
reconnect all peripheral devices. Then reboot.

Happy Computing.

 

[Guest]

The Bios chip is a black rectangular chip with the words 'Award, Phoenix, or
AMI on it. It is an EPROM. Take all ESD precautions.

 

[cuba]

When you try to load Windows using any option besides LAST CONFIG, any
error messages reported could help. Have you tried to recover via
KB307545?

But then again, does the eMachine's restore CD (I assume 2 or more CDs
actually) boot into a special eMachine restore process? I.e. MS CDs
boot into a setup program allowing more than just installling XP.

It sounds as if the eMachines restore CD fails to properly setup the
registry, or perhaps there is some part of their OEM version of Windows
that actually looks for something in the BIOS for it to even boot. If
the former you just may be able to get it to work, but not without a
ton of work. If the latter, you can ask eMachines for one of their
BIOSes.

If it is a registry problem then one couild install you HDD as a
secondary drive in another PC and load it's registry for modification
("Load Hive"). One needs to know what to fix though.

A retail version of XP will most probably work fine for you. I assume
that the eMachine's restore wiped out your HDD already so don't even
bother with a "Repair Install" and just install as new.

Some OEM restore CDs are nothing like MS retail CDs and will not
install on non-OEM hardware. (Some OEM CDs, like Dell's, are very close
to MS retail and will install, but will ask for a product key which --
for lack of a better term -- needs to be in their OEM "range" or it
will not activate. Some Dell CDs will actually work on more than one
Dell hardware platform, which is kind of interesting.)

It is a Microsoft/OEM collusion caused "problem". Normal capitalism
drives them to squeeze every last dime that they can from their
customers (you in this case), and corporate greed drives them to
produce software that cannot be run on anyone else's hardware.