Is my battery or motherboard bad? Athlon 64 3200+
I have just purchased, much to my dismay a refurbished emachine. It has a athlon 64 3200+/200GHZ processor, running XP home
When I first turned it on I get a screen (blue) with a heading of Ambios New Setup Utility Ver 3.31a. This screen access to standard CMOS , BIOS Power Mgmt, PNP/PCI Config, Integrated Peripherals, Frequency/Voltage, Passords ETC, If you need more infor I will be more specific.
I hae called emachine tech support and they had me go through several things and nothing worked. If I press ESC, and then enter the machine goes on and loads but it acts weird. When I place the curser into a text box it just starts a string of dots.I can delete them and it will let me type.
Anyway here is the deal. Emachines tech support tells me that it is a bad battery. I have also read somewhere in my discussed that it could also be the motherboard. They say it requires a CR2032 Lithium battery and they cannot ship me a new one I have to sen in the computer for that. One of the drives is also not working and they are sending me a new one to install myself. That of course has not yet shipped. I am afraid I have 900 dollars of junk, that is suppose to be under 90 day warrenty.
By the way I purchased this from Tiger Direct and they say it is Emachines problem, and emachine says they sell and work on the refurbished machines. I am getting bounced around.
1. Battery or motherboard or what?
2. any suggestions about how to get someone to fix this.
3 Is there such a thing as a computer lemon law?
When I first turned it on I get a screen (blue) with a heading of Ambios New Setup Utility Ver 3.31a. This screen access to standard CMOS , BIOS Power Mgmt, PNP/PCI Config, Integrated Peripherals, Frequency/Voltage, Passords ETC, If you need more infor I will be more specific.
I hae called emachine tech support and they had me go through several things and nothing worked. If I press ESC, and then enter the machine goes on and loads but it acts weird. When I place the curser into a text box it just starts a string of dots.I can delete them and it will let me type.
Anyway here is the deal. Emachines tech support tells me that it is a bad battery. I have also read somewhere in my discussed that it could also be the motherboard. They say it requires a CR2032 Lithium battery and they cannot ship me a new one I have to sen in the computer for that. One of the drives is also not working and they are sending me a new one to install myself. That of course has not yet shipped. I am afraid I have 900 dollars of junk, that is suppose to be under 90 day warrenty.
By the way I purchased this from Tiger Direct and they say it is Emachines problem, and emachine says they sell and work on the refurbished machines. I am getting bounced around.
1. Battery or motherboard or what?
2. any suggestions about how to get someone to fix this.
3 Is there such a thing as a computer lemon law?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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If you have a Radio Shack near you, you should be able to get a replacement battery for less than $5.
You may have a loose connector to the keyboard, so try reconnecting it. A bad motherboard is more like to crash your system, cause spontaneous reboots, or not boot at all.
You may have a loose connector to the keyboard, so try reconnecting it. A bad motherboard is more like to crash your system, cause spontaneous reboots, or not boot at all.
ASKER
Please excuse my ignorance, what is a kb?
KeyBoard. Sorry about that....
/RID
/RID
>> the machine goes on and loads but it acts weird.
What else is abnormal about how it's operating besides the textbox thing?
CR2032 is a very, very common battery -- 2 dollars at K-Mart. It's weird how they want you to send the computer in to fix a battery, but they will ship a whole drive to you!
Anyway, I agree that it seems like a keyboard malfunction more than a motherboard problem. I don't see how a bad CMOS battery would effect the keyboard, but who knows.
-Burbble
What else is abnormal about how it's operating besides the textbox thing?
CR2032 is a very, very common battery -- 2 dollars at K-Mart. It's weird how they want you to send the computer in to fix a battery, but they will ship a whole drive to you!
Anyway, I agree that it seems like a keyboard malfunction more than a motherboard problem. I don't see how a bad CMOS battery would effect the keyboard, but who knows.
-Burbble
kpsnyder
Hmm this sounds like a BIOS utility software program, not actually your BIOS setup itself. Do me a favour check that you do not have a floppy disk or a CD rom that is booting when the machine starts.
It does sound like a bootable startup program that is be invoked on start up!
Hmm this sounds like a BIOS utility software program, not actually your BIOS setup itself. Do me a favour check that you do not have a floppy disk or a CD rom that is booting when the machine starts.
It does sound like a bootable startup program that is be invoked on start up!
kpsnyder
the other thing you can do is contact support at http://www.ami.com/amibios/ I am sure they will reply to you!
the other thing you can do is contact support at http://www.ami.com/amibios/ I am sure they will reply to you!
ASKER
Thanks for all of the good suggestions. I have taken the computer into a shop to have the battery put in and a dvd w/r drive put in so I have yet to try your suggestions. I only have partial use of my right arm due to an accident so things like working with tiny threads and small parts usually end up with my blood pressure sky rocketing because of the frustrations associated with dropping parts and stripping threads.
Hope to get it back tonight and will see if your suggestions work so I can award the points. Thanks again for your suggestions just letting you guys know what is going on and why I haven's accepted an answer yet.
Hope to get it back tonight and will see if your suggestions work so I can award the points. Thanks again for your suggestions just letting you guys know what is going on and why I haven's accepted an answer yet.
lol about your frustration dropping stuff... oooh brings back memories when I used to workas an engineer out in the cold freezing my goolies off! Figets all frost bitten and dropping screws down drains ... not a nice feeling
:)
:)
ASKER
Thamk you all for your help, As it turned out, after I got the drive replaced I tried another keyboard and it worked just fine. Sorry it took so long to get this done. I am so glad I found this exchange it is a great fountain of information, much better it turns out than the emachine's tech support.
Thank you all again for your contributions
Kim Snyder
Thank you all again for your contributions
Kim Snyder
Best Regards