[Jtegg007]

Hi, I have an Emachines T6534 that is currently being restored (its far out of warranty). Its been sitting at the "please wait", after booting with the CD and telling it to restore, for almost three hours. I just wanted to know if this is normal or if the machine froze. I would just restart but im worried that, if it is normal, then ill fry the restore partition and be screwed.

So, has anyone restored an Emachines and can judge the time frame?
Any word of advice would be helpful, thanks in advance!


BTW, before I get flamed to death, im posting this under Windows XP because its being restored in windows XP. Also, im new here and I really dont know where to post it

[hopsing47]

hello Jtegg007

I did a reinstall for my W3644 eMachines, and it didn't hang up like you describe. The full reinstall took about 20 minutes, and when it finished, all those nice free programs I had when I took it out of the box--- THEY ARE GONE!! You're left with just a basic Xp Home install, and I had to use my old Win 2000 computer to go to eMachines website, enter the W3644 model number, and fish my way along til I found the download page for this model, and download the sound and graphics drivers and then put them on my Kingston DataTraveler USB drive and transfer them over to the eMachines. Win Media Player 11 was gone, I then had version 10. Internet Explorer 7 was gone. I had vers. 6. I again had to use my old Win 2000 machine and round up all this stiff and transfer over via the USB stick drive and install them. Apparently the Xp image they are using is old.

Whatever you do, don't flash your BIOS. Maybe you did this already. If you mess with the BIOS, you're a cinch to be dead as a duck. I saw posts elsewhere about this. If you go to the mobo mfgr's website and download the standard BIOS update for your mobo, it'll destroy your ability to reinstall, as it appears they have it all coded where the BIOS is involved in the process.

I would never get mixed up with one of these companies again. The Win 2000 machine referenced above, I built from scratch back in 2002 so I've never faced the reinstall problems such as you mention. That FAT32 partition you see on your hard drive apparently has a great deal to do with the reinstall operation.

Wish I knew more what to say that would help. I erased my hard drive with the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, had it do a complete diagnostic inspection, which it passed, but erasing that FAT32 partition probably explains why all the other goodies did not reinstall. Letters to the company have gone unanswered, and their tech support via email is a total waste of time.
Good luck...