Friggin Emachines....

[DrFaroohk]

So my wonderful wal-mart special computer is finally having the issues I knew it would.

Started out with BSOD which I figured was connected to some video card issues. After a brief bit of research it seems like a lot of people have this problem - some kind of conflict with the NVIDIA drivers and something else.

Computer would only start in safe mode. Fine. Uninstalled the driver, reinstalled it, tried different ones too and nothing seemed to work.

Finally giving up I remembered having some problems a month or two ago and running system restore. I did this right before bed.

So I wake up this morning to discover that system restore didn't work and my computer has been steadily rebooting itself on and off for the past 8 hours. Great. I bet that's good for the hardware.

Still messing with it I finally tried running this "restore to factory settings" thing, which ran for about a half hour, everything looked cool, and then when it rebooted I still got BSOD, and apparently the "restore" fucked up about halfway through, so now I can't do jack fucking shit with the thing. Won't boot in safe mode, not normally, nothing.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I don't know enough about computers to fix this!!! Or even to look it up on google. What do I type in? I could cut and paste my whole post on there, but my luck with search engines would probably bring up pages that involve jacking off and shitting.

[Red Panda]

I've found typing in the problem, "Blue screen on boot up Nivia drivers conflict" for example often brings up forums where people are describing their problem, which is good because the forums tend to have people who can fix it.

[DrFaroohk]

Well now that I've bitched about how impossible the problem was, the restore seems to actually be working and its booting up right now. It's like I just bought the thing again, doing setup stuff and all that.

Kinda sucks I've lost all my files though. Unless it saved them somewhere for me.

[lordlundar]

My general response for repair ideas when they mention it's an emachine:

If under warranty, grab a rubber mallet and "stress test" the machine for 5-10 minutes. (I have yet to see an emachine survive 2 minutes) That way there's no marks.

If not under warranty, skip the rubber and grab a sledgehammer. The thing at that point is dying a slow miserable death, and it's best to put it out of it's (and yours) misery.

Why yes, I have dealt with constant issues regarding emachines. How could you tell?

Kinda sucks I've lost all my files though. Unless it saved them somewhere for me.

Not unless they're saved to an external source. A system restore takes it back to factory settings, which will certainly override the access database for the files, if not the data itself. The files are gone unless you use a recovery program, which could do more damage than good.

[DrFaroohk]

Actually it saved most of my stuff like pics and music and movies.

All my programs are gone, and it's been a bitch reinstalling them because even though they're not there, the computer thinks they are and says "Windows cannot install XYZ because it already exists."

[lordlundar]

See if you can grab an XP disk (don't worry about the CD key, it's not important) and boot into the disk. It will then boot into the install process and allow you to format the hard drive before the install. Select to do a full format and when it's done, stop the install process. Put the restore disk in and boot with that disk to restore the system to factory settings.