[bobbyp416]

Hi... This is a problem that's been plaguing me for some time now...

A friend of mine entrusted me with a 'fix' to his wife's laptop. When I first got it and had a look at it, the thing was a virtual train wreck. It would freeze, blue-screen, lock up during Windows updates and sometimes not even start up at all.

It's an 'eMachines' model E267 with Windows 7 OS, AMD Athlon TF-20 processor, with 2GB RAM.

It frustrated me to the point of doing a system recovery from the OS program image on the hard drive, because the owner had failed to burn recovery disks when the machine was brand new.

After recovery, both Windows AND 'eMachines' scurry about trying to do their set-ups, with Windows going after 2 important updates shortly after initial start-up, and the 'eMachines' program douing its own thing - a 17- step start up process whereupon it goes about initializing various programs and drivers.

The 'eMachines' set-up always freezes on Step #11, "Install eMachines Recovery Management... Please Wait.". Again, this is Step # 11 out of 17 the machine is supposed to go through (I guess).

I have tried this recovery start-up with Windows Live Update turned on AND turned off, trying to allow 'eMachines' to do its thing first, but it seems to make no difference... It STILL freezes at Step # 11.

I have used 'msconfig' to access the Start-up menu to turn off the eMachines routine, and allow Windows to update first... All to no avail.

What I fail to understand is why there are 2 programs both needing the same(?) set-ups at start-up after a System Recovery... ? What is causing the 'eMachines' start-up to lock?

Also, after finally shutting down the 'eMachines' start-up down out of sheer frustration, I have downloaded Windows Live Updates... All 86 of them. Though the downloads and installation go flawlessly, the system restart to configure the system freezes, and the system does not start.

Are these programs 'fighting each other'?

What am I missing here? What gives?

Any and ALL help would be greatly appreciated!