What's the deal with these *!/**&#@! EMachines?

People. I must have some ungodly luck with these damn laptops. Let me just give you guys my history. I did a ton of research before my purchase in February of 04. Finally I bought the EMachines M6805, and think god I also bought the Best Buy 3 year warranty. The 6805 was freezing while trying to play games, took it to Best Buy, they told me (2 weeks later) that it couldn't be fixed and to get another one. I upgraded to the M6807. A key fell off the keyboard, (the . (period key), took it to Best Buy, 2 weeks later they say that Emachines can't fix it so go get a new one. I upgraded to the M6809. Key fell off the keyboard again, had a few pixels missing, and Best Buy said it couldn't be fixed, and I was told to get a new one once again. Finally I got the M6811. I've already taken it in for the faulty hinge's. That's been fixed, but now, THIS COMPUTER IS FREEZING WHEN I TRY TO INSTALL and PLAY ANY GAMES.

I'm thinking about not getting an Emachines this time. (Gateway) Why this is so frustrating is because I talked my friend into getting an Emachines laptop. He got the M6809. He hasn't had one problem. He hasn't had any problems with any of the games I'm trying to play, in fact, both of the games are his that he has already played and finished on his Emachine (Splinter Cell Pandora - Call of Duty) and now he's playing Far Cry with almost no problems. Neither one of us has done any overclocking of anything, we don't even know how. I even went all the way back to a complete system restore, thinking that it must have been a problem with something downloaded from the internet or something. Still freezes up at every attempt to play any games.

Any laptop ideas with similar specs and a decent graphics card? I'm about ready to yell at a Manager, showing him all of my receipts, and demanding every penny back so I can go get a dell laptop.

Thanks Jack

 

Are you trying to copy the game disks to the hard drive? Or are you trying to do the standard install?

Plus, I have an M6809, and have not had a single problem (hinges included).

 

You can use Image Drive to run a full game on it. But i would make sure you have the latest version of Direct X download to run any game as well as making sure you have the proper resolution set for running your game. Some games depending on what it is still run in a 16 bit resolution and I have seen systems freeze running them in 32 bit.

 

Thanks for the replies.

Mvaughn12,
I have no clue what Image Drive is, but I know I have the latest version of Direct X, and Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow requires you to run the game at 32 bit resolution, which I do, and it constantly freezes before you even get to the game. Call of Duty freezes in the set-up screen as well. I know something must be wrong because after a clean system restore, the games still freeze and the computer is just slower in general. Noticably slower.

ReverendDC,
I am doing the standard installation, but what I think both of you have forgotten is that my friend with the 6809 does absolutely nothing different and his games run flawlessly. He has no extra virus protection or adware/spyware blocking software, we have not even touched the overclocking ablilties of the video card or the processor.

Something just isn't right. I'll be on my way to Best Buy yet again.

Jack

 

Drive Image let's you place the full CD of the game on a virtual drive to run. Forigve me when I ask this but when you do your installs do you disable your antivirus? Sometimes not doing that will cause a game to install improperly.

I have a M6805 and run all run those same games flawlessly but I did have a bad install due to not turning off my antivirus doing the install so the game froze up but after turning it off and doing a fresh install it ran like clock work.

 

I am in almost similar situation with the original poster. I started with M6807 with intermitent lock up. Return it to BB for M6805 with dead USB port. Return it again for M6809 until the cracked hinges and flickering LCD. Got M6811 now, RMA it to EMachine for cracked hinges and doing ok until now.
Going back to your problem. Most of the time, game freeze can be fix by booting clean. What I mean, run msconfig and turn off all start up item and services that are not Microsoft's. You'll be surprise what junk you have running. I do.

 

Mvaughn12,

Please tell me more about Drive Image. Benifits, where to get it, how it helps or doesn't help the computer. Also, I usually try and right click on the tool bar programs in the bottom right corner and disable them BEFORE I'm going to play a game, but I haven't done that before installing a game. I'll try that.

Dugdug, I will definitely attempt to clean up my startup.

You know, I have to tell you guys something. This crap really pisses me off. I mean I'm so paranoid with these laptops that I don't put anything on my desktop or my toolbar. Whenever I'm installing ANYTHING on my laptop it will ask if I want an icon on the desktop or the toolbar and I always say NO to try and prevent this exact kind of bull**** that I'm putting up with now. Maybe I just need to be like my friend and put whatever whenever wherever I want on this laptop. Maybe then I'll finally be able to have a laptop that will play a simple game without freezing.

 

Here is a link, you can download a Free copy of Virtual CloneDrive 5.0.1.3 here:

http://www.slysoft.com/en/download.html

Real easy to use. You can set up a total of 26 virtual Drives minus your original drives and you can also name each drive instead of a letter you can name it the game you install.