PM8M-V with emachine T2885

[puNDuKE]

Alright so I'm familiar with motherboard settings but I think I've met my block here with this PM8M-V working with this emachine. This guy brought it over to me said it didn't start up anymore so I replaced his power supply and that still didn't do it so I figured it to be his motherboard. I put everything from the old motherboard into the new one and set everything up to read all the parts through the slave and set the hardwares jumpers to be proper with the master/secondary settings and what not. After all of this I start up the computer and it begins to display a quick flash of the dimmed XP logo coming in to load but does not instead the 5 sec off on the monitor displays and the computer restarts.

I figure I needed his recovery software at this point. I get this software tonight and run the emachine recovery wizard and format windows and install the software from the cds (3 of them) and complete the process it restarts and then again it does it witht the screen and restarts the computer. Looking at some details when it boots up it says something about Serial_Ch0 not being found and a Serial_Ch1 I believe. Now I thought the problem to now be with the raid or SATA configs if I am not mistaken? I've tried disabling this feature through the bios cause I didn't think it needed any of this and it was causing me problems booting the thing up but it still continues with the emachines software it doesn't ask me to add the raid drivers from the disk that came with the mobo so in a last attempt here I'm trying to install my copied version of WinXP using that F6 add other device option through the cd to the disk cause I figured you had to go through the whole installation to install the raid disk information through cause when I tried to exit before after that point it gave me a warning about not installing windows xp.

At this point it looks like it is working cause it's in the windows with the installtion process, etc. loaded it up to this point... seems ok so far but I'd really much rather prefer using this guys emachine content and have his software installed not mine but again if it comes down to setting it up through f6 I don't recall the emachine software ever bringing that up just format and install as far as I know. If anyones familiar with the emachine T2885 and what I should do at this point to get this guys software (his version of xp and other software included) I'd much appreciate the reply.

 

[puNDuKE]

hmmm it loaded up all good with my win xp prof cd when I formatted this time and installed my copy, etc. probably cause of the integrited f6 for raid installation cause I went and did the emachine recover process again and it went right back to rebooting when the xp screen was about to be bright. What should I do here load my software and give him my key and tell him to keep off winupdate or hopefully there is an easier way around it.

 

[puNDuKE]

*bump*

 

[jgest]

:thumbsup: You will not have much luck with the EMachine restore cd's if you changed to a different motherboard than exact original equipment specs. The E-Macine restore cd's are an image not a normal WIN XP install CD. The restore cd's are loading motherboard and video drivers for the OEM motherboard that it shipped with. You are hitting a wall when Windows starts and tries to use the video settings from the original chipset. You can however install from a real windows XP CD and just call Microsoft for registration using the customer/friends XP Key.

 

[kfman]

I don't really have any answers for you, but I found this topic extremely interesting... This weekend, my dad's friend gave me his computer saying that the power supply died. Like that one, this is an eMachines T2885. I swapped the power supply and it acted like it was going to start up as soon as I applied power, but didn't actually do anything. After that, it acted the exact same way, refusing to even spin any fans. One thing I did notice was that the LED near the processor did light up to indicate that the system was powered.

I find this to be too weird that two identical machines died so close to one another. Anyway, I was looking to replace the motherboard as well, would you recommend that motherboard, the MSI PM8M-V to replace the motherboard on that computer? Did you ever try starting up in safe mode to fix the drivers? I'm curious to hear what the end results of this were because I, like possibly many others will be looking to replace the motherboard on this machine in the near future. Maybe this is a defect in the board used for these computers? Anyway, any help or tips you could give me would be greatly appreciated! Thanks again!

 

[wplunk]

I have this exact same problem, gone through the exact same steps and have concluded that either I have to find an xp disk that I can use to repair the install or I have find an exact motherboard to match the old one. If you conclude either of these ways or some other would let me know. Also, when you finally get the computer back up and running would let me know how.

Thanks
Wes