Ok, here is my dilemma. My girlfriend has an older EMachines computer, about 8 years old. She has no installation disk. Below are the particulars on her computer:
EMachines T6522
Windows XP Media Center Edition
3500+ AMD Athlon 64 processor
2.2 ghz
512 kb L2 cache
2000 MHz fsb
200 gb hard drive
1 gb ram
ATI Radeon xpress 200 video card
Lately, she has been having problems whereas the computer doesn't want to boot properly. I have tried in the past to do a reinstall of XP that she has on the hard drive but while doing so, it asks for the installation disk, which she doesn't have. The other night, she wanted to upload some pictures from her TracFone but, when she tried, the computer would lock up. Then, last night, the computer would not even start. There just seems to be too much corruption within the system somewhere. Today, I tried several times to get the computer to boot up, but to no avail. We then decided that maybe we could wipe the hard drive clean and install a fresh copy of windows 7. I did a little research and, besides having to download an updated driver for the video card, it seemed that I could do that, barely. The first problem I ran into was trying to get the Killdisk cd to run. I kept having to unplug the computer and restarting it. The optical drive would start, then stop. The other thing was the keyboard would shut down also. Eventually, I was able to get Killdisk to work and was able to get the hard drive wiped clean. I then restarted the computer with the Windows 7 cd in the drive. The hard drive would run fast but nothing would happen. After unplugging and restarting the computer many times, The Windows 7 disk started to copy the files. When that was finished, the screen would go black except for the words "starting windows". Then the computer would freeze. It would just stop doing anything. I tried several more times and was able to get the files copied again a couple more times but would always stop at "starting windows". It just won't go any further.
Now, I don't know if this is a hard drive issue or maybe a motherboard issue or maybe something else. I don't want to spend the money on a new hard drive only to find out it's something else. If it's some sort of corruption within the motherboard or a major bios issue, then we'll just scrap the computer. My girlfriend only uses her computer for small things like Facebook and checking her email so, unless this is a major repair issue, we cannot justify spending several hundreds of dollars on a new computer and would rather fix this one. Any help would be appreciated.
EMachines T6522
Windows XP Media Center Edition
3500+ AMD Athlon 64 processor
2.2 ghz
512 kb L2 cache
2000 MHz fsb
200 gb hard drive
1 gb ram
ATI Radeon xpress 200 video card
Lately, she has been having problems whereas the computer doesn't want to boot properly. I have tried in the past to do a reinstall of XP that she has on the hard drive but while doing so, it asks for the installation disk, which she doesn't have. The other night, she wanted to upload some pictures from her TracFone but, when she tried, the computer would lock up. Then, last night, the computer would not even start. There just seems to be too much corruption within the system somewhere. Today, I tried several times to get the computer to boot up, but to no avail. We then decided that maybe we could wipe the hard drive clean and install a fresh copy of windows 7. I did a little research and, besides having to download an updated driver for the video card, it seemed that I could do that, barely. The first problem I ran into was trying to get the Killdisk cd to run. I kept having to unplug the computer and restarting it. The optical drive would start, then stop. The other thing was the keyboard would shut down also. Eventually, I was able to get Killdisk to work and was able to get the hard drive wiped clean. I then restarted the computer with the Windows 7 cd in the drive. The hard drive would run fast but nothing would happen. After unplugging and restarting the computer many times, The Windows 7 disk started to copy the files. When that was finished, the screen would go black except for the words "starting windows". Then the computer would freeze. It would just stop doing anything. I tried several more times and was able to get the files copied again a couple more times but would always stop at "starting windows". It just won't go any further.
Now, I don't know if this is a hard drive issue or maybe a motherboard issue or maybe something else. I don't want to spend the money on a new hard drive only to find out it's something else. If it's some sort of corruption within the motherboard or a major bios issue, then we'll just scrap the computer. My girlfriend only uses her computer for small things like Facebook and checking her email so, unless this is a major repair issue, we cannot justify spending several hundreds of dollars on a new computer and would rather fix this one. Any help would be appreciated.