Bruce wrote:

<<Do all mother boards come with CDs?>>

Yes, normally, they should. Without the correct mobo drivers, nothing much 
is going to work properly.

<<Am I going to run into problems if I install multiple drivers or will the 
hardware seek out the proper driver?>>

Open Device Manager, go to whatever item is at fault, click Install Driver, 
and the installation wizard will take over.  If you have the wrong Cd, 
which you obviously have, you'll have to point it to the folder containing 
whatever drivers you have downloaded from the HP site. If it can't find the 
correct driver, the "next" button will be greyed out to prevent you from 
installing incorrect drivers.

If there are drivers already installed for that item, but they don't work, 
click the Rollback button which will get rid of whatever wrong drivers 
there may be in the system before the new drivers get installed.

<<Am I going to run into problems if I install multiple drivers or will the 
hardware seek out the proper driver?>>

I don't trust Yahoo for anything! But I guess what you are seeing is OK.

<<I was assuming that the LAN card (there is such a thing, isn't there?) 
was independent of the mobo and that it would have been the one that came 
with the original eMachines computer as opposed to being part of the mobo. 
Am I wrong? >>

Partly. The NIC card (Network Interface) these days is built into the mobo. 
But if that has failed, which is possible, then you'll have to insert a 
separate NIC card. It's quite possible you might need one of these if 
there's only a blank page in Control Panel/Network.  That's quite likely 
if, as you say, the mobo has proved troublesome in other ways.

But if the network drivers (ie the LAN driver) appropriate to your mobo 
aren't installed, you will likely see only a blank page anyway. If, 
whatever you try, (and you are fairly certain that you have the correct 
driver) the Network page remains blank, it's probable that you will need an 
add-on NIC card. They aren't very expensive. I don't know how easy that 
would be on a E-Machine. I doubt you could do it on a laptop. Maybe there 
are USB NIC cards, though I suspect that the USB pipeline could well be a 
bottleneck to your internet speeds, especially if you want to watch 
streaming HD video.

Don Penlington

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