M6809 upgrade to XPPro doesn't work

Does anyone have any idea why upgrading the e-machine M6809 from XP Home to XP Pro would cause a problem with the DVD player/ writer? I purchased a M6809 from Best Buy on Tuesday and noticed that the DVD player was "skipping" and reading frequently. I took it back today; they exchanged and tried upgrading another M6809 they had with the same results- basically the XP Pro doesn't seem to recognize the video card with the resultant DVD player not working correctly. I contacted Lite-On and they said the machine should work with XP (didn't specifiy the version) and provided a firmware updated (which Best Buy didn't have so couldn't install). The second time they also installed a 512mb memory card upgrade (and found the problem someone else wrote about wrt to 256mb being "fixed") but then recreated the problem on my first machine.

They also tried install a full version of xp pro (not the upgrade from xp home) with similar results.

I returned the machine late tonight until something get's straightened out.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Phil[?]

 

Did they use the drivers from the emachines disk?

 

They did use the drivers from the emachine disk; although when they tried for the xppro it wouldn't accept them because it didn't recognize the video card (no info in that screen) Thanks Phil

 

When upgrading from xp home to pro, something happens with the display drivers and they don't get installed during the upgrade. I think everyone will run across this issue when doing an upgrade. I don't know about a clean install. I had to jump through some hoops to get the ati drivers to install. My friend has a 6809 and he had the same problem when upgrading. I don't recall how I eventually was able to install the ati drivers. I know that if you run the ati setup, it will always complain. THis link gave me some ideas though.
http://www.subwolf.org/v2/articles.php?article=1
I think I had to update the driver from within the Device Manager. Also, something about the VIA agp drivers was an issue. Sorry about being so vague but if you search around you'll find the answer.


emachines m6805

 

Turns out e-machines doesn't support xp pro and that's why the appropriate drivers aren't on their cd: see their response below:
Phil

"Thank you for contacting eMachines.

I see you are having problems with your DVD player after installing Windows XP PRO.

I realize this must be frustrating, however we do not support XP PRO you will need to contact the manufacturer of the hardware and/or software which you are having difficulties with, for assistance in installing or configuring it to operate properly. We can only support the original hardware and/or software that were preloaded on the system.

eMachines shall provide the original purchaser with technical & e-mail support for the hardware and software products incorporated into the product at the time of its manufacture by eMachines.

Technical & e-mail support with the incorporated products mean providing assistance to the original purchaser solely for the purpose of properly setting up and configuring the hardware and software the product came with, but shall not include any instruction on how to use such product. We apologize for the inconvenience, and if you have any other questions.

You may contact Priority One Support for assistance installing or configuring any 3rd Party Hardware/Software to operate properly.

Priority ONE Support (Per Minute - Charged to Phone)
(900) 329-2299
Billed directly to telephone account
(5 a.m. - 1 a.m., MT, daily)

Priority ONE Support (Per Minute - Credit Card)
(888) 348-2299
Billed to major credit card
(5 a.m. - 1 a.m., MT, daily)

Should you require further assistance with your eMachines system, please feel free to send another message. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Sincerely,
Ray"

 

When i installed XP Pro I used the Omega drivers and they installed fine.

 

Emachines doesn't support a major operating platform? Whoo boy howdy (no I'm not a cowboy, I just felt the need to make an exclamation, and I figured the JHC usage would be the wrong way to go...)
I'm sorry but that's unbelievable. Like your TV manufacturer saying, Sorry, we support basic cable, but if you've got digital cable, you're SOL, because we don't support that.
Sheesh. Just when we were starting to really like emachines...
Hopefully they'll get this sorted out soon.

 

I just bought a Emachines M6809 and install Windows XP with no problem. I did a clean install, repartitioned the hard drive with a 70GB partition and the 6GB partition I will load the emachine XP Home Edition on it. After loading Windows XP, I loaded the drivers from the Emachines Restore disk. Everything is working.
Small complaints:
80GB hard drive is 4200rpm
Why dose it say its running at 1.6Ghz..hm, now it says 2.0Ghz?
Where can I get more info on the internal motherboard, dvd drive, etc?

I am using the Microsoft 802.11g router and it was simple to setup and use with this laptop.

 

Clarification: I meant to say I install Windows XP Professional with no problems.

 

The DVD drive is a Pioneer and the MB is based on the Ariba.

 

I just bought the m6809 as well. Great looking machine. I had severe problems upgrading to XP Pro and after two failed attempts (one of which seemed a fatal flaw for some reason) I did the above mentioned reformat/clean install. Using the drivers supplied on the m6809 DVD it all works about 85% perfect. I'm having a few small problems, one of which is that I can't install any of the freebie software that came with the machine. Most of it is not a big loss, but it would have been nice to be able to use the DVD burner right away. It also won't play DVDs. Does anyone have a link to the Pioneer driver site? Or know how I can resolve this?

Also, I can't get it to recognize the widescreen format in 3D games...I just get black bars along the sides as if it only recognizes standard 1024x768. THere's a setting in the ATI control panel to stretch the image, but that only results in distortion not true widescreen. Any suggestions are most welcome. Otherwise great machine. So much better than what I gave up...a Compaq Presario 1200, 4 gig hd, 132 meg ram, AMD K6-2 475. Yikes!

 

I did all theabove, but when finally fed up, I zero wrote the hard disk, then intalled xp pro, I only installed the drivers of the install disk, as there is no freebie apps I don't already have a better one of, including dvd play, copy. The only problem I have now is that emachine support doesn't work, however, windows update "I Think" has the MB drivers up to date. All drivers and components work as they did before the upgrade(I played pretty hard for about a week before I messed with it to bad) I don't ususally visit this site, but if you have questions about my success feel free to e me at [email protected]. Good luck...

 

The widescreen with games is a problem with each game. A lot of games only choose to use 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions. In their defense, authoring UI to look good in both 4:3 and 16:9 can be quite a bit of extra work (depending on how they coded their projects). On the other hand, 16:9 displays are getting very common so there's isn't much of an excuse anymore.

The bright side is that new games are more and more properly supporting 16:9 resolutions. Down side is old games, either black bars, or stretch the image. Your choice.

 

The easiest way I found on upgrading XP Home to XP Pro is to first uninstall the OEM ATI drivers (and all the 3rd party crap you don't want or need) and install the Omega ATI Drivers, then install XP Pro. Run windows update over and over again till it tells you there are no 'critical' updates available.

Afterwards create a new 'ghost' image of your HDD. Now whenever you need to reinstall, just use the newly created image.

Cheers,
Jae

 

I don't understand what the big whoop is about switching to XP Pro from Home is. Granted, there are certain things which Pro does better, like networking and security. However, with a little knowledge and time, you can use Home to your advantage.

Add to that the upcoming Windows 64 version, based on Pro, and I don't think that anyone should be in such a rush to upgrade...yet.


m6809