eMachines mobo is flashed with wrong BIOS

So I have a eMachines system here. Boots up and gives me a HP splash screen and then basically says error press ctrl alt delete to restart. Ive entered the bios and restored defaults but no difference so im figuring Im gonna need to flash it back. How do i go about doing this?

 

Could you elaborate a bit? What eMachines model is this mobo from? Did you flash the BIOS yourself trying to unlock something? What does the full error message say? I'm sure it's not "Error, press CTRL+ALT+DEL". Is there an error code that can be looked up?

 

I bought the tower for basically a pittence under the assumption the Mobo was KIA. A boot up shows the hp splash screen then a screen testing the hardware shows up which is all working before

ERROR
0271: Check date and time setting

Default BIOS settings have been loaded due to BIOS update or checksum issues

Press <F1> to setup, <F2> to resume

I pressed F1 this time and it brought up the bios however restoring defaults gives me a different screen and now ive got

A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart which loops the process

 

I changed the jumpers on the HD to the master w/ slave present and now there is no OS found. Think I may be on the verge of a victory

 

It could just be an HP motherboard. I've seen countless eMachines motherboards die myself (and now there's probably 4+ Txxxxx series chassis' sitting around my house) due to their shitty quality.

 

You might get a message like this if the CMOS battery is dead or dying. CR2032's are always pot luck.

Once you've ruled that out, take a look at the motherboard for identification and get searching on google for the latest BIOS update.

 

I've got around to reformatting and it fully completes the setup goes to reboot and goes into setup like it did nothing at all I exit setup and let it boot Operating System not found. Would a dead cmos really do this?

Edit: Have tested system with a HD I know has a OS on it. Still no OS found.

 

I don't think it's wrong bios, if it was a wrong bios then you'd find that the thing wouldn't start up at all, and you'd be lucky in the CPU and RAM weren't fried.

 

With the Bios thing I was just going with what I was told. It looks to be just a generic mobo like most companies use. No clear OEM logo though.

Also it has a Bestec power supply, The e type ones too. As soon as this thing is running a OS that is getting replaced.

 

Little late to the game but roughly 99.9999999999999% of the time if you flash the wrong BIOS you gotta pull the chip and either reflash it with a flashing device or pop in another chip with the correct BIOS. Did this myself once.

It would never boot up and say anything remotely like that unless there are some forward thinking mobo engineers out there.

 

I don't have a fucking clue what is up with it I've replaced the cmos.I've now got it to the point where it reformats upto the press any key to boot from cd screen however when i press a key it just beeps.

 

Just adding my experiences...

I've had 2 computers come to me with bad BIOS flashes. The "Insert bootable disc" that comes up is looking for a floppy with a particular BIOS flash utility. Loaded on the floppy are the BIOS file and a flash utility which will boot up once recognized.

Remember; all is not lost as long as there is no physical damage to the hardware. Hopefully you don't have to yank the chip for the fix though.

Edit: mother boards are cheap. buy a new one!

 

Looking at dropping 19.95 on a replacement board thats used. ... thats almost as much as I paid for the damn thing

If anybody knows a cheaper board that will run a socket 478 celeron @ 1.80 ghz leave a link please!

 

After the installation, have you tried changing the boot order so it tries to boot from the HD instead of the CD-ROM first (you'll have to do that in the system settings)?

Did you also run "fdisk" and not just "format c:" ? You might have some invalid partitions the installation is saving to. Use FDISK and remove every partition and create one primary partition (drive 'c').

If it has multiple hard drives installed, remove all but the one you want to install the OS to. The HD should be on IDE0 and the CD should be on IDE1 and both be set to "master" (since they're on two separate channels).

 

If I went into bios to change how it loaded it wouldn't complete the installation. XP Formats copies files then restarts and completes the installation

There are no partitions. I am using one big partition.

I only have one HD plugged in. Its nothing to do with any of that anyway since the computer won't boot even when running off a HD that I know has XP installed.

 

Just a thought is there anything in the BIOS which allows you to choose between AHCI or IDE disk modes?

IDE should be the default, this sometimes causes errors but usually on newer machines.

 

hmmm tough one, bios seems to be ok else u wouldnt get that far, and u repalce the cmos battery too right? you might have a damaged ide cable but i rule that one out becasue u were able to copy the files over...the error come from the inability of the system to correctly find drives?

 

Theres no problem with it reading drives what so ever as it can do all that and reformat and everything. My current issue is it fully formats goes to restart to complete installation and then says press any key to boot from disc. no keys do anything when pressed and it just beeps over and over when keys are pressed. Im still slightly under the impression the bios is flashed with wrong bios as the mobo is the same model and everything the system had at release but with a HP bios.

Ill have a poke around in the bios later on to see if I can find what twimfy mentioned.

 

Are you using a USB Keyboard or PS/2?

Even though the machine isn't that old you might want to try a PS/2 Keyboard just incase it has USB Legacy issues.

Also make sure you don't have PXE booting enabled (unlikely from what you've said so far.)

Check the RAM too, reseat if there's only one stick. If there's two try running off one and then the other.

Download yourself a live CD bootloader which may allow you to boot the XP partition from it rather than relying on XP's own MBR which might be causing a problem.

Lastly try another OS. Download a Linux Live CD and see if that will boot, and if it does see if you can access the HD when it's running. Or try Vista or Windows 7. Sometimes this error occurs when not using OEM discs and some installation cd's can cause these kinds of errors for example XP Home might work but professional might not. Might sound like BS but eMachines PC's are cheap and made mainly for students and the education market, and they'e often configured to stay the way they came.

I'm guessing you don't have huge plans for such an old machine so if you can get something like Ubuntu running on it, it's not just a heavy brick.

 

I've got some socket 478 motherboards, about 4 or 5 of them if I remember rightly, and even got some CPUs for them (2-2.58GHz) if you're interested.