Bruce,
I won't replace an E-machines motherboard.  In order to follow the MS
Windows/E-machines licensing, I can only replace the motherboard with an
exact replacement or I have to install another OEM version of Windows.  The
cost of the E-Machines specific motherboard is roughly $250, not including
labor.  The cost of another motherboard and Windows OEM runs about the
same.  By the time I reload Windows and change the motherboard you're
looking at the same price as a new machine.  Installing a different
motherboard into an existing WinXP installation is always dicey and fraught
with trouble.

Be aware, if you do this wrong, you can end up loosing everything on your
hard drive so make a complete backup first.
You can Google "HAL", hardware abstraction layer.  You need to delete the
HAL from your system (this is what Rick was saying).  Restart the computer
and provide the drivers as it asks for them.  The system SHOULD work fine
after that.  The caution is that if you feed it the wrong driver(s) it won't
function at all.  It could get stuck in a blue screen loop and the only
option is to format the drive and start from scratch.

Ron Jobe

On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 12:25 AM, John Sproule <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> It's always a difficult situation when it comes to replacing a motherboard
> on computer that is a few years old.  As has already been stated, the ideal
> situation is replacing the motherboard with the same make and model, but
> this typically means searching sites like ---snip---
> Unfortunately, given the problems that you are having, it looks like a
> re-install of the software is in the future, but I don't know if you'll be
> able to use the recovery disk that came with the computer, unless you can
> come up with an emachine motherboard.  You might be looking at a purchase of
> a replacement operating system, as well.  At this point, I don't know if
> things are very cost effective, given the cost of a basic new system.
> ---snip---
> John Sproule
>
> ------- Original Message Below -----------
>
> Date:    Fri, 3 Sep 2010 14:55:56 -0700
> From:    Bruce Lund <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: What is reasonable to expect after paying to replace mother board?
>
> I suspected something like that. I was hoping that somewhere in all the
> IT merger madness that eMachines was bought out by HP and that might
> explain this anomaly. Is there any other possibility on that HP flash
> screen than they installed an HP board into my eMachines? And if that is
> the case and the
> only way to save this is to install HP drivers, is that going to trip up
> other programs and hardware that were used to playing well with
> eMachines mother board?
>
> Bruce
>
>
> PS For those who did not see the earlier posts, I paid to have motherboard
> replaced on my eMachines D2880 and now the computer and programs are
> crashing a lot which it did not do before.
>        PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
>                    visit our download web page at
>                 http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml
>

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml