My computer was used with no problems last night, then when I went up to start up this morning, I noticed that the screen was black. So I pressed the power button and sat back to wait. First I got a black screen, then the original EMachines screen, then black again, then Windows XP, then black and so on, ad infinitum.

Each fade to black was accompanied by a popping noise, which I first assumed was coming from the monitor. So I tried a different monitor, thinking that the original one was dying. The second monitor did the same thing and I then realized that the noise was coming from the CPU. As the unit was powering up, there was a high pitched noise being emitted. I cleaned the dust out, but that made no difference. What's next? Check the fan, the power supply? How?

Any and all help much appreciated.

Thanks,
Karen

Can you clarify the sounds? Popping and a high pitched noise?

Is the high pitch a steady electronic beep? Or a mechanical friction noise?

If the popping is different can you describe it in more detail?

Was the high pitch always associated with the popping?

Turn it on with the case open. Watch the fans. Try to pinpoint the pop and or pitch.

How old is this eMachine? What is the exact model?

I would suspect either the graphics card or CPU?

If the high pitch is an electronical sound it is probably the BIOS trying to indicate the problem although in general this is a specific series of spaced beeps.

I have an EMachines T2040 purchased in December of 2004
2 G Celeron
40 G HD
256 DDR
3D Intel Extreme Graphics AGP

The fans are running, the high pitched noise is coming from one of them.

The popping sound is more accurately described as a pop/click x 2, followed by a groaning whir. I can feel the groan in the HD, but not the pop/click.

This is the sequence of screens:
XP
black
click/pop, groan - blue flash on screen, takes up about 2/3 of the screen
EMachines
black
XP
repeat

No beeps

Thanks again.

Which fan? The CPU fan? Or a case fan? If CPU you should stop starting the computer until you can fix it to avoid burning out the CPU.

Noisy hard drives are a sign of imminent failure. If you have any valuable data you should consider slaving the drive on another computer and extracting your data.

eMachine does not list the manufacturer of your hard drive but if we knew that we could try the diagnostic.

If your CPU fan is the screecher you need to replace it or try to fix it. I don't know how you feel about working with this stuff but we can help.

If you don't want to bother about it yourself I would say it definitely needs a repair shop.

Some links:

http://www.emachines.com/support/pro...es&model=T2040

Chipset: Intel 845GL chipset

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-009236.htm

http://downloads.emachines.com/userg...xgen2_3_en.pdf

I'm okay working with it, just don't know hardly anything about how to do these things. I can follow directions, though.

The noise is coming from the CPU fan, but it's not a screeching noise, like the fan's going. I had a fan die before, so I can remember that sound. It's really faint.

Okay, the biggie. How do I slave the HD? Can I slave it to my laptop and thus save my data? Or do you mean installl a new HD in the case, then slave the old HD and try to somehow transfer data?

Thanks.

The slaving requires another desktop computer.

The simplest solution is to temporarily move the DVD/CD IDE connector (Secondary Master) to this problem hard drive. When you then boot to the Primary Master you should have access to this other drive.

If you actually want to slave it you would put it on the slave connection of the Primary Master after changing the rear jumpers to slave.

As to the fan I would remove it and clean it carefully and use WD40 or some lubricant (off of the board) or perhaps replace it. Is it a fan/heat sink combo?

While I was downstairs on my laptop, waiting to hear back from you guys, my husband was upstairs, randomly pushing F keys. He finally got to the Windows Advanced Menu Options, he chose last known good configuration, then randomly pushed F keys and enter. He next got a blue screen with "GDI32.dll not found, reinstallying the application may fix this problem". What!? Does this mean anything useful?

gdi32.dll contains functions for the Windows GDI (Graphical Device Interface) which assists windows in creating simple 2-dimensional objects.

This would load in Safe Mode bypassing your Intel onboard chip hoping to load a graphical interface.

Pressing F8 loads the Safe Mode Options which is what you had. You might try choosing Safe Mode then System Restore and choosing a date when everything was OK.

Also you can try to reinstall XP with the eMachine recovery disk but again it will wipe all of your data unless you extract it first.

But if you are still having these obvious hardware problems e.g. the CPU fan and or the Hard Drive are still making noises I would still attend to them.

Okay, thanks for your help. I'm stopping for tonight, but tomorrow, I'll probably go get a new hard drive and see what I can do.

Okay ... Let us know how it goes and thanks for the thanks! We are here to help.

Again if you want the data off of the old drive you will need another fully functional desktop that you can add this drive to and extract from.