Emachine won't boot

[mawtg2000]

Hello,
i have a friend's emachine that will not boot past e screen with option ESC BIOS F12 BOOT, pushing either key does nothing.

I have removed and discharged battery on mb, i have held each ESC and F12 while booting and it goes to e screen with please wait... and stays there.

I have just now paid for and downloaded recovery disk for this machine - EL1850-01e
and booted and nothing different has happened.

My friend plays a lot of games and I have warned her about being careful and scanning. I am happy for any suggestions.

 

[Branden]

first thing to try is reverting BIOS to default settings. since you can't get into bios you can reset it by unplugging the machine and popping out the battery for a minute.

if that doesn't work, next thing to do is strip it down to the bones: seat only the CPU and a single stick of RAM.
if you still can't even get into BIOS after this then you've narrowed the problem down to 1 of 4 things: mobo, PSU, CPU, or RAM. find and swap different PSU/CPU/RAM if you can to verify which is the problem part.
if it does work (you can at least get into BIOS) then start adding components one at a time (starting with additional sticks of RAM then HDD) until you've narrowed down the problem part.