[Rocktaxi]

Hello everyone.

I'm trying to do a full restore to factory conditions of my Emachines T-1842. I do have the original restore Cd's and have done a full restore in the past (about a year ago) with no problems.

However, now when I put in the 1st of 2 disks last night, all that came up was a message "Device drivers have been relocated to disk 2 for this machine"... Ok, I thought, as Disk 2 is labeled "Device Drivers". So I figured I just had to reboot the PC and the primary restore CD would then be recognized and I'd be on my way to reformatting and starting over with a clean PC. (note-restore is not to fix a problem, just clean off junk and start fresh to give pc to family member)

Well, after the reboot, it just booted normally to the Windows XP logon screen and no indication of "Would you like to restore this pc etc...." I know the CD/DVD drive is working with no issues so it's not that. I called Emachines tech support and they told me to reboot the machine and as soon as it started to boot, to press the "R" key for restore. While I'm not by any means a computer tech god, that totally sounded ridiculous to me, as you would expect to hit F1, F3, etc since that's what you usually do during the boot process to bypass it. Well, after trying it 3 times while on the phone with tech support, it still was just booting as normal with no problems.

The only thing that has changed since the last restore/original installation was a removal of the factory CD drive and upgrade to a new DVD-RW drive. As well as the obvious upgrade to Service Pack 2. Could it be that the restore CD's are looking for the original CD drive/OS to access? Or is that unrelated?

I did try navigating the Restore CD's via Windows Explorer and there is nothing there that would allow to start the restore manually (though I'm not sure if that's standard or not). Any thoughts on how to get the restore CD's to start? Emachines tech support suggesting buying new CD's for $20 and using them, but my originals are nearly mint condition so it's not that they are scratched/unrecognizable or anything.

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When you restored it before, did you change the boot order to CD ROM Drive then Hard Drive

(Boot the PC, keep tapping the delete key, (possibly F2) until it enters set up, change the boot order, press F10, type Y, put the CD in the drive, press enter)

[Retired Tech]

When you restored it before, did you change the boot order to CD ROM Drive then Hard Drive

(Boot the PC, keep tapping the delete key, (possibly F2) until it enters set up, change the boot order, press F10, type Y, put the CD in the drive, press enter)

[Rocktaxi]

thanks for the reply... no, I did not change the boot order last time to my knowledge. I thought about maybe that was what I needed to do last night when I was trying to get this to work but I was not sure which key was actually going to get me into the BIOS setup to begin with. I don't think I've ever actually gone in there on this PC, so while I was hitting every "F" key during boot, I can't say that I ever actually tried the old standard "delete" key during boot to get to the BIOS setup. I'll try that tonight and see where it gets me.

[kunwon1]

You might try ESC if DEL doesn't work.

[Retired Tech]

You could also let it boot to see what it says on the first screen about set up

[Rocktaxi]

Ok, well, new day, but same problem. Spent last night working with everyone's suggestions and while I was able to get into the BIOS setup with the delete key, it is set to boot from CD Drive first and still to no avail. Call Emachines tech support again and I guess the first guy was just being nice cause the person I got last night wanted to charge me $20 to assist me. (Yes, I am out of warranty but this is a basic question, I'm not asking for much here!)

The only thing I can think of to try is to take the restore disks to my parents house who actually have the exact same PC and see if the disks start on their system. That way I'd know if it was actually the disks that were bad or something with my system. Again, I doubt it is the disks though as they are mint condition and have only been used once before.

does anyone know if swapping out hardware (New CD Drive) since last installation could be doing it or could it be something this XP SP2 that's blocking it?

[Retired Tech]

See if you get anywhere with this, just to see if you can access files

Items in blue which are underlined are clickable to give more information about the process

Start the System Restore Utility at a command prompt

1. Restart your computer, and keep tapping F8 during the initial start-up until you get options, select Safe Mode with a Command Prompt then press enter.

2. Log on to your computer with an administrator account or with an account that has administrator credentials.

3. Type the following command at a command prompt, and then press ENTER:

%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

4. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen to restore your computer to an earlier state.

Look for the most recent system checkpoint created before the errors to restore from

For additional information about the Safe mode with a command prompt, click 315222 to see a description of the Safe Mode Boot Options in Windows XP

[Rocktaxi]

Thanks for the info Keith. I guess one thing I should have mentioned though is that as part of another fix I was doing on the PC unrelated to this error, I accidentally deleted all prior restore points, all but the last 2-3 days so I don't really have much to go back on. But I will try your suggestions tonight when I get home and report on the results tomorrow.

[Retired Tech]

It should create a checkpoint each day, you just need to get it away from trying to load with the files it is currently using