There used to be groups where one could get a cogent answer about PCs
acting up.
I'll try here.

I have a friend with an E-Machines PC.
OS is XP home. It looked to me that the HD had failed.
I confirmed this to my mind by using a sata to usb adapter and found that
the old HD could not be accessed.
I checked that my setup was ok using other drives that were on hand.

So I had her get a replacement HD. Two restore disks are on hand so I
charged ahead feeling that all would be well.

Phoenix BIOS is set to start from the CD first and the HD next.

But when trying to start the recovery from the CD. there are two choices.
1) restore the system.
or
2) start from the CD

Choice 1 warns that all data will be lost. That's ok. It's a new HD
So I select Y go do it and the system hangs
Trying choice 2 brings an unexpected result. The system tries to start from
a nonexistent A drive.

This box has no A drive. Looking through the setup panels show no mention of
a floppy drive.

What now?

Charlie

On May 12, 2:21*pm, "Charlie" wrote:
There used *to be groups where one could get a cogent answer about PCs
acting up.
I'll try here.

I have a friend with an E-Machines PC.
OS is XP home. It looked to me that the HD had failed.
I confirmed this to my mind by using a sata to usb adapter and found that
the old HD could not be accessed.
I checked that *my setup was ok using other drives that were on hand.

So I had her get a replacement HD. Two restore disks are on hand so I
charged ahead *feeling that all would be well.

*Phoenix BIOS is set to start from the CD first and the HD next.

But when trying to start the recovery from the CD. there are two choices.
1) *restore the system.
* or
2) *start from the CD

Choice 1 warns that all data will be lost. That's ok. It's a new HD
So I select Y go do it and the system hangs
Trying *choice 2 brings an unexpected result. The system tries to start from
a nonexistent A drive.

This box has no A drive. Looking through the setup panels show no mention of
a floppy drive.

What now?


Reflash the BIOS.

Charlie wrote:
There used to be groups where one could get a cogent answer about PCs
acting up.
I'll try here.

I have a friend with an E-Machines PC.
OS is XP home. It looked to me that the HD had failed.
I confirmed this to my mind by using a sata to usb adapter and found that
the old HD could not be accessed.
I checked that my setup was ok using other drives that were on hand.

So I had her get a replacement HD. Two restore disks are on hand so I
charged ahead feeling that all would be well.

Phoenix BIOS is set to start from the CD first and the HD next.

But when trying to start the recovery from the CD. there are two choices.
1) restore the system.
or
2) start from the CD

Choice 1 warns that all data will be lost. That's ok. It's a new HD
So I select Y go do it and the system hangs
Trying choice 2 brings an unexpected result. The system tries to start from
a nonexistent A drive.

This box has no A drive. Looking through the setup panels show no mention of
a floppy drive.

What now?

Charlie




Bootable cd's emulate a floppy A: with boot software, so allow boot
from A

Charlie wrote:
There used to be groups where one could get a cogent answer about PCs
acting up.
I'll try here.

I have a friend with an E-Machines PC.
OS is XP home. It looked to me that the HD had failed.
I confirmed this to my mind by using a sata to usb adapter and found that
the old HD could not be accessed.
I checked that my setup was ok using other drives that were on hand.

So I had her get a replacement HD. Two restore disks are on hand so I
charged ahead feeling that all would be well.

Phoenix BIOS is set to start from the CD first and the HD next.

But when trying to start the recovery from the CD. there are two choices.
1) restore the system.
or
2) start from the CD

Choice 1 warns that all data will be lost. That's ok. It's a new HD
So I select Y go do it and the system hangs
Trying choice 2 brings an unexpected result. The system tries to start from
a nonexistent A drive.

This box has no A drive. Looking through the setup panels show no mention of
a floppy drive.

What now?

Charlie





Is there really data on the CD to restore the HD??? Some computers
depend upon the restoration partition on the HD to retrieve the data
necessary for restoration. In other words, the CD is simply a boot
vehicle that will look to the HD for the restoration data it needs.
Read the CD and see if it has several directories of data that could be
what it needs.

Another question would be is the new HD partitioned and formatted? I
ran the restoration DVD on a HP computer and it would not restore. It
gave little reason for not doing so. What it needed was partitioning
and formatting. One would have thought the restoration process would
have been prepared to do that, but it was not.

Ken wrote:

Is there really data on the CD to restore the HD??? Some computers
depend upon the restoration partition on the HD to retrieve the data
necessary for restoration. In other words, the CD is simply a boot
vehicle that will look to the HD for the restoration data it needs.
Read the CD and see if it has several directories of data that could be
what it needs.

Another question would be is the new HD partitioned and formatted? I
ran the restoration DVD on a HP computer and it would not restore. It
gave little reason for not doing so. What it needed was partitioning
and formatting. One would have thought the restoration process would
have been prepared to do that, but it was not.


My eMachines W3118 came with a restoration DVD for the factory
installed XP home, which includes all the drivers.


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
My eMachines W3118 came with a restoration DVD for the factory
installed XP home, which includes all the drivers.

Many computers that include disks, and all that don't have some way of
creating a restore disk from the install partition or files.

It depends upon the manufacturer how insistant it is. One brand I saw would
not let you do anything with the newly installed windows system until the
burning of DVDs (install Windows, provided apps) was finished.

Another made you click "not now" every hour until you did.

Other's just gave you a one time notice, it was up to you to figure out how
to do it if you canceled it.

One even included blank DVDs.

The one I am using now, and MSI Wind U100, included Hebrew Windows on the hard
drive with an insistant option to burn disks and a set of English DVDs. Note
that the computer did not have a DVD or optical drive of any kind.

Apple used to include installation DVDs of MacOS with all of their computers,
including the MacBook Air line, which has no optical drive. Now they include
a USB memory stick with it. I expect netbook manufacturers will do the same for
Windows too.

Back to the original question, does the BIOS offer a boot menu, or a setup key?

With the boot menu, you can just choose the DVD drive, with a setup menu,
which comes up after your press the key (eventually), you can change the
boot order to include the DVD drive first.

BTW, did you try the A drive option? It might try to boot from the floppy and
after giving up try the DVD.


Geoff.xsxc
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Occam's Razor does not apply to electronics. If something won't turn on, it's
not likely to be the power switch.

On May 12, 6:26*pm, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

* *My eMachines W3118 came with a restoration DVD for the factory
installed XP home, which includes all the drivers.

--

Good God, man! An expert electronic tech that admits he has an
eMachine w/XP home...WTF!

On Thu, 12 May 2011 17:21:39 -0400, "Charlie"
wrote:

I have a friend with an E-Machines PC.

Your friend has my sympathies. You also have my sympathy for not
supplying the model number.

OS is XP home. It looked to me that the HD had failed.
I confirmed this to my mind by using a sata to usb adapter and found that
the old HD could not be accessed.
I checked that my setup was ok using other drives that were on hand.

Yeah, it's dead.

So I had her get a replacement HD.

More sympathy. Make and model of replacement drive?

Two restore disks are on hand so I
charged ahead feeling that all would be well.

Are the restore disks for the unspecified model machine?

Phoenix BIOS is set to start from the CD first and the HD next.

Make sure the floppy disk is disabled in the BIOS.

But when trying to start the recovery from the CD. there are two choices.
1) restore the system.
or
2) start from the CD

I'm not sure what "start from the CD" actually is suppose to do.
My guess(tm) is that it will boot the conventional Windoze install and
possibly put you into the "recovery console", which you don't need.
Use the "restore the system" option. It works.

Choice 1 warns that all data will be lost. That's ok. It's a new HD

You have no data to lose.

So I select Y go do it and the system hangs

Not good.
Does the BIOS see the new unspecified model hard disk drive?
Did you enable the specific SATA port in the BIOS? This is the usual
problem. For some insane reason, the authors of the various SATA
BIOS's insist that the user enable/disable SATA devices, instead of
probing for them, as in previous ATA BIOS's.

Trying choice 2 brings an unexpected result. The system tries to start from
a nonexistent A drive.

El Torito CD start specifies that the boot drive is A:.
Is this a SATA CDROM drive, or an ATA drive?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_torito

This box has no A drive. Looking through the setup panels show no mention of
a floppy drive.

You're assuming that the A: drive is always a floppy drive. It's not.
It's just the first drive that the system finds.

What now?

Google perhaps?

How to Do an eMachines System Recovery
http://www.ehow.com/how_5969283_use-e_machine-recovery-cd.html

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Bob Villa wrote:

On May 12, 6:26 pm, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

My eMachines W3118 came with a restoration DVD for the factory
installed XP home, which includes all the drivers.

--

Good God, man! An expert electronic tech that admits he has an
eMachine w/XP home...WTF!


I have over 100 computers at home. I refurbish them and give them
away for free. I used one eMachines Windows ME computer for ten years,
and the original install of ME is still in use in another, later model?
I needed ME to use an older flat bed scanner so I stuck the drive into a
T1220 that was shipped with XP..

You do know that a lot of HP computers used the same motherboard,
power supply and drives as eMachines that sold for half the price?

Or that Gateway and eMachines is owned by Acer?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway,_Inc.

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

"You do know that a lot of HP computers used the same motherboard,
power supply and drives as eMachines that sold for half the price?"

"Or that Gateway and eMachines is owned by Acer?"

And that makes them any good?

abi

"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" wrote:

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
My eMachines W3118 came with a restoration DVD for the factory
installed XP home, which includes all the drivers.

Many computers that include disks, and all that don't have some way of
creating a restore disk from the install partition or files.

It depends upon the manufacturer how insistant it is. One brand I saw would
not let you do anything with the newly installed windows system until the
burning of DVDs (install Windows, provided apps) was finished.

Another made you click "not now" every hour until you did.

Other's just gave you a one time notice, it was up to you to figure out how
to do it if you canceled it.

One even included blank DVDs.


I've seen several new computers that told you to burn a restore DVD,
and gave you one try. One had a bad drive, and others had corrupt files
on the hard drive, which failed, in warranty.


The one I am using now, and MSI Wind U100, included Hebrew Windows on the hard
drive with an insistant option to burn disks and a set of English DVDs. Note
that the computer did not have a DVD or optical drive of any kind.

Apple used to include installation DVDs of MacOS with all of their computers,
including the MacBook Air line, which has no optical drive. Now they include
a USB memory stick with it. I expect netbook manufacturers will do the same for
Windows too.

Back to the original question, does the BIOS offer a boot menu, or a setup key?

With the boot menu, you can just choose the DVD drive, with a setup menu,
which comes up after your press the key (eventually), you can change the
boot order to include the DVD drive first.

BTW, did you try the A drive option? It might try to boot from the floppy and
after giving up try the DVD.

Geoff.xsxc
--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Occam's Razor does not apply to electronics. If something won't turn on, it's
not likely to be the power switch.


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

On May 13, 9:42*am, Abi Normal wrote:
*"You do know that a lot of HP computers used the same motherboard,
power supply and drives as eMachines that sold for half the price?"

* *"Or that Gateway and eMachines is owned by Acer?"

And that makes them any good?


No matter what the source, when you're making stuff to sell at a
certain price point, corners have to be cut somewhere. Having a
different brand for your low price line prevents loss of reputation
for your standard products.

Abi Normal wrote:

"You do know that a lot of HP computers used the same motherboard,
power supply and drives as eMachines that sold for half the price?"

"Or that Gateway and eMachines is owned by Acer?"

And that makes them any good?


Does trolling make you feel important? All three brands suffered
from the substandard electrolytic problem, like just about every other
brand. they got a bad reputation, but the others were "just tricked by
component counterfeiters".

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

On May 13, 11:56*am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
Abi Normal wrote:

*"You do know that a lot of HP computers used the same motherboard,
power supply and drives as eMachines that sold for half the price?"

* *"Or that Gateway and eMachines is owned by Acer?"

And that makes them any good?

* *Does trolling make you feel important? *All three brands suffered
from the substandard electrolytic problem, like just about every other
brand. *they got a bad reputation, but the others were "just tricked by
component counterfeiters".

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

If you don't build your own rig, then you might as well buy a Dell.
But not Acer(eMach,Gatewat) or HPaq!
If that's trolling TFB!

Abi Normal wrote:

On May 13, 11:56 am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
Abi Normal wrote:

"You do know that a lot of HP computers used the same motherboard,
power supply and drives as eMachines that sold for half the price?"

"Or that Gateway and eMachines is owned by Acer?"

And that makes them any good?

Does trolling make you feel important? All three brands suffered
from the substandard electrolytic problem, like just about every other
brand. they got a bad reputation, but the others were "just tricked by
component counterfeiters".

If you don't build your own rig, then you might as well buy a Dell.
But not Acer(eMach,Gatewat) or HPaq!
If that's trolling TFB!


Yawn... I owned a computer store for several years where I built a
lot of computers, but you're still a troll.

Let's see. 'Charter' is your ISP, and you have to use Google groups
with a screen name of 'Abi Normal', but you claim that you aren't a
troll?


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

On May 13, 1:02*pm, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
Abi Normal wrote:

On May 13, 11:56 am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
Abi Normal wrote:

*"You do know that a lot of HP computers used the same motherboard,
power supply and drives as eMachines that sold for half the price?"

* *"Or that Gateway and eMachines is owned by Acer?"

And that makes them any good?

* *Does trolling make you feel important? *All three brands suffered
from the substandard electrolytic problem, like just about every other
brand. *they got a bad reputation, but the others were "just tricked by
component counterfeiters".

If you don't build your own rig, then you might as well buy a Dell.
But not Acer(eMach,Gatewat) or HPaq!
If that's trolling TFB!

* *Yawn... *I owned a computer store for several years where I built a
lot of computers, but you're still a troll.

* *Let's see. *'Charter' is your ISP, and you have to use Google groups
with a screen name of 'Abi Normal', but you claim that you aren't a
troll?

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

You yawn, yet you reply...how stupid is that?!
As far as Charter/GG goes... how smart would it be to use a newsreader
at work. Yes, you do have all the answers.

On Thu, 12 May 2011 17:21:39 -0400, "Charlie"
wrote:

There used to be groups where one could get a cogent answer about PCs
acting up.
I'll try here.

I have a friend with an E-Machines PC.
OS is XP home. It looked to me that the HD had failed.
I confirmed this to my mind by using a sata to usb adapter and found that
the old HD could not be accessed.

Depending on what's wrong with the HD, you might be able to access the
other one or two partitions on the HD, though you can't access the XP
partition. But the other partitions are hidden, I think.

It would be the old HD that had the restore partition. I'm told in
the Dell group that this partition can be copied too, which is not
surprising, but I'm guessing you have to first unhide it. And you
can't do that with the Storage Management software in XP afaik but you
can with 3rd-party software, like Partition Magic 8, Paragon free and
Easeus free Partition Manager, though the latter and maybe Paragon
will ruin a win98 partition if you try to change its size, even when
runnning under XP.

However all restore will do is put it back the way the factory shipped
it. Did it have special features that XP from MS doesn't have. If

Is this a laptop that requires special drivers. Can you dl them from
emachine?

If it has nothing special and you can get the drivers, you can use a
retail XP CD but use the Product Key from this computer.

But better yet, see Michael Terrell's first post. I think if you use
an emachine DVD, you don't need to know the product key. At least I
think that is true for Dell, so I'm guessing it's the same.


I haven't read the rest.

I checked that my setup was ok using other drives that were on hand.

So I had her get a replacement HD. Two restore disks are on hand so I
charged ahead feeling that all would be well.

Phoenix BIOS is set to start from the CD first and the HD next.

But when trying to start the recovery from the CD. there are two choices.
1) restore the system.
or
2) start from the CD

Choice 1 warns that all data will be lost. That's ok. It's a new HD
So I select Y go do it and the system hangs
Trying choice 2 brings an unexpected result. The system tries to start from
a nonexistent A drive.

This box has no A drive. Looking through the setup panels show no mention of
a floppy drive.

What now?

Charlie

On Fri, 13 May 2011 04:49:03 +0000 (UTC), "Geoffrey S. Mendelson"
wrote:


--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Occam's Razor does not apply to electronics. If something won't turn on, it's
not likely to be the power switch.

And if a CRT tv doesn't have a picture, it's not likely to be he
picture tube. even though everyone I dealt with thought it was.

Abi Normal wrote:

As far as Charter/GG goes... how smart would it be to use a newsreader
at work.


I wouldn't use Google Groups at work, unless the boss wanted some
information and was standing there waiting. People are paid to work,
not troll newsgroups.

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

On May 13, 5:58*pm, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
Abi Normal wrote:

As far as Charter/GG goes... how smart would it be to use a newsreader
at work.

* *I wouldn't use Google Groups at work, unless the boss wanted some
information and was standing there waiting. *People are paid to work,
not troll newsgroups.

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

She said if you were bored why even respond and maybe she's the boss.
Do you do any thinking outside the box?

Bob Villa wrote:

On May 13, 5:58 pm, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
Abi Normal wrote:

As far as Charter/GG goes... how smart would it be to use a newsreader
at work.

I wouldn't use Google Groups at work, unless the boss wanted some
information and was standing there waiting. People are paid to work,
not troll newsgroups.

She said if you were bored why even respond and maybe she's the boss.
Do you do any thinking outside the box?


What box? I drove the engineers nuts at my lt job because I
questioned their designs. I ****ed of a lot of my coworkers because I
worked harder than they did, and some of my ideas made it into space.

How's that home repair group working for you?


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

On May 14, 2:47*am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

...and some of my ideas made it into space.

*

I think we have all heard that many times. If you were half as smart
as you think...you wouldn't have bothered to respond, would you?
You remind me of another anal retentive engineer BillW50. God checks-
in with him also...when He's stumped!

Bob Villa wrote:

On May 14, 2:47 am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

...and some of my ideas made it into space.



I think we have all heard that many times. If you were half as smart
as you think...you wouldn't have bothered to respond, would you?
You remind me of another anal retentive engineer BillW50. God checks-
in with him also...when He's stumped!


Don't you have a plugged up toilet calling for your expert help?


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

On May 14, 7:41*am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
Bob Villa wrote:

On May 14, 2:47 am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

...and some of my ideas made it into space.

I think we have all heard that many times. If you were half as smart
as you think...you wouldn't have bothered to respond, would you?
You remind me of another anal retentive engineer BillW50. God checks-
in with him also...when He's stumped!

* *Don't you have a plugged up toilet calling for your expert help?

--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.

I'm working on it...but your immense head won't pass.

Bob Villa wrote:

On May 14, 7:41 am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
Bob Villa wrote:

On May 14, 2:47 am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

...and some of my ideas made it into space.

I think we have all heard that many times. If you were half as smart
as you think...you wouldn't have bothered to respond, would you?
You remind me of another anal retentive engineer BillW50. God checks-
in with him also...when He's stumped!

Don't you have a plugged up toilet calling for your expert help.

I'm working on it...but your immense head won't pass.


That's what your mother was screaming, just before the doctor used a
36" pipe wrench to pull your sorry ass out of her. Too bad about your
brain damage, troll.


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.