New eMachines notebook includes DVD player

Looks like they took it off their site?

Yeah, I can't see it either, very cool if this is true though, been looking for a nice cheap laptop although I wish it had an eraser instead of a touch pad..

It's up again. 15.4" diagonal, right?

Here's a better link for it -- http://store.emachines.com/emachines/storefront/accessorize.do?productId=111&action=new

cool machine, however, tried to install ati display drivers for win2k on it to no avail. called tech support but they simply says win2k is not supported on this system. the bundled disk includes win2k drivers though. so just a warning for ppl who're interested; bad emachine support. bare it in mind.

Just got it, very, very neat. I called support first to see if the drivers were on the CD before I opened the box since I needed to load XP pro and needed device drivers separate from an image install. Support first said there weren't any drivers but after I pushed, since that didn’t make too much sense, the tech found someone in the know and confirmed the drivers were there. They actually were and now I’m running Pro, all XP drivers work fine w pro - as they should. It’s a nice machine. I have to get used to the with though. Very different. EXTREMELY crisp screen. I just couldn’t buy the $800-$1200 HP or Compaq since the screens were unusable fuzzy. This one is extremely crisp and bright and about 95+% as crisp as my $2500 laptop’s screen. The specs are great and amazing for a laptop of the price. I got $250 in rebates from Circuit City too. I just hope emachines long-term quality has improved and their making money on this. If so, it’s a winner.

What's the deal with the drivers ? they're right there on CD#3 and c:\Drivers. Newer ones/aternate OS Drivers are prob on the components manufacturer's Site: ATI, Broadcom, etc...Big deal!
Mine works fine...even loaded Linux on it. I love this laptop: Looks Great, feels solid and very fast (athlon 2200+ XP).

I just got this laptop. It's a very good laptop!
the keyboard is nice, the screen is awsome!! nice speakers for laptop. And the price is right!!!! Just hope it will last. Most people thinks, it's cheap, so it has to be cheap made!!!
I don't know how true it is for this laptop!!! The case seems strong, so far I don't have any problems yet!!!! Power life is alright too 3hrs watching 2movies!!!!

I just got this laptop. It's a very good laptop!
the keyboard is nice, the screen is awsome!! nice speakers for laptop. And the price is right!!!! Just hope it will last. Most people thinks, it's cheap, so it has to be cheap made!!!
I don't know how true it is for this laptop!!! The case seems strong, so far I don't have any problems yet!!!! Power life is alright too 3hrs watching 2movies!!!!

I just got this laptop. It's a very good laptop!
the keyboard is nice, the screen is awsome!! nice speakers for laptop. And the price is right!!!! Just hope it will last. Most people thinks, it's cheap, so it has to be cheap made!!!
I don't know how true it is for this laptop!!! The case seems strong, so far I don't have any problems yet!!!! Power life is alright too 3hrs watching 2movies!!!!

I just got this laptop. It's a very good laptop!
the keyboard is nice, the screen is awsome!! nice speakers for laptop. And the price is right!!!! Just hope it will last. Most people thinks, it's cheap, so it has to be cheap made!!!
I don't know how true it is for this laptop!!! The case seems strong, so far I don't have any problems yet!!!! Power life is alright too 3hrs watching 2movies!!!!

I just got this laptop. It's a very good laptop!
the keyboard is nice, the screen is awsome!! nice speakers for laptop. And the price is right!!!! Just hope it will last. Most people thinks, it's cheap, so it has to be cheap made!!!
I don't know how true it is for this laptop!!! The case seems strong, so far I don't have any problems yet!!!! Power life is alright too 3hrs watching 2movies!!!!

I just got this laptop. It's a very good laptop!
the keyboard is nice, the screen is awsome!! nice speakers for laptop. And the price is right!!!! Just hope it will last. Most people thinks, it's cheap, so it has to be cheap made!!!
I don't know how true it is for this laptop!!! The case seems strong, so far I don't have any problems yet!!!! Power life is alright too 3hrs watching 2movies!!!!

I've had this laptop for about a week. The display is awesome for a laptop. Bought mine at Costco for $1100. I'm having trouble getting it to work on wireless. Not much help at customer service. Any suggestions for use on wireless net.

I bought this in Circuit City. I had problems initially with setting up wireless (Netgear MA101 USB wireless adapter). I finally got it working but haven't figured out exactly what got it to work. I will go back and try again if I have time but here are some tips: when entering WEP keys, enter one key at a time and then press OK. I also noticed that there was a wireless ON key - Fn+F4 I think that I pressed once. Even though that is probably for the internal wireless card...

Yes, I also face the wireless problem.
I use linksys wireless pc card.
It will disconnect and need to re-connect in about 5 minutes cycle time. It's the only problem. I love all other things on this machine. It's still great in my mind!

Great machine. Awesome video. Cdrom drivers need work though. On the three that we have the cdrom would not recognize that a cdr disk was in the drive when trying to write to it. Support said to uninstall the device and reinstall. This was not a total fix. We will be installing nero to perform our writing tasks.

I just got mine yesterday. It works great with everything I've tried. I've done a presentation with an external projecter without any problems. I also love the display, and the fact that it wasn't loaded with tons of useless adware when I bought it like an HP or Compaq. Watching DVD's on this notebook look amazing with the wide screen. Can't wait to keep using.

Uuuggghhh. I'm on my 4th one!!!! The first two had burnt pixels. The third wouldn't boot. Just froze on the emachines screen, couldn't even get into the bios. My fouths seems to be working even though the screen is slightly skewed in relation to the frame. I'll live it. The problem is after the first one, I got so hooked on the wide screen I couldn't go back to ye olde square ones. Luckily Costco have a liberal return policy. I fully expect this thing to die the day after the year warranty is up.

This Optical doesn't seem to tolerate any less that a perfect disk. And mine freezes up when I play avis or mpgs in media player 2 (v 6.2). I cant STAND the newer versions. What crap. I havr to restart, even Ctrl-Alt-Del won't do anything.

I also don't like XP but looks like 2K wont cut it.

The shared memory for video BLOWS.

Photoshop runs slower on it than my 333Mhz Winbook XL2.

So basically, Its a 1000 dollar portable DVD player with web browsing capabilities.

Whats with the firewire port on the back that isnt really a fire wire port?

No prob with wireless. XP runs different. You can't use Linksys util, have to use built in. Had to copy and paste my key. It wouldn't accept manual entry.(seems an XP issue)

I love the form factor of the machine, but my gut says its a throwaway.

I just got mine a week ago. The screen is awsome and can't see myself ever wanting to go back to the regular dimensions of a notebook. The graphics are crisp, the machine is fast, the battery life is just what a mobility person needs. The price is great for what the emachine notebook offers. The machine looks cool with easy functioning buttons. The only problem I had was the drivers. but after deleting them and reinstalling them, everything is running smooth again. I haven't tried alot of gaming on it yet but I'm sure it will be just fine. And again folks, the price is excellent. If you wanted something better, well, buy something more expensive. every computer company has computers that fail, and it's easy to generalize. This is a nice machine!!!!

Just got it, and I have mixed reviews, mostly positive. First, the negative: (1) it may be the hottest-running laptop I've ever had. OK, it's not a big problem, it doesn't heat up the whole room, but it's noticeably a bit hotter than my Sharp and Toshiba laptops; (2) I think it's been billed as "thin and light". It is "thin" -- relative to the screen width -- but it's definitely not light. It's actually quite heavy even for it's size. It's kind of unweildy to pick up and move around and the weight inside of the thing seems to be somewhat unevenly distributed, giving it a weird sort of heft.

Now the positive: (1) the extra wide screen is VERY cool -- even if you're not a graphic artist, I think most people would enjoy this; (2) DVD's look extra cool on that extra-wide screen; (3) the DVD player works great, unlike the built-in players I've had on earlier notebooks; (4) at this price, all things considered, it's probably one of the best deals on the market for a new laptop choice.

Just got one at Costco - so far I'm favorably impressed but I do have one major issue so far - it won't work with any of my wireless network cards (Linksys and US Robotics) no matter what I do and support can't seem to help. I see from other posts that I am not alone and that this looks to be a genuine problem. Has anyone else resolved this?

I had problems with wireless. However, I don't think it had to do with the laptop. The belkin card I had gave me the option to use the XP configuration util or belkins. Initially, I chose the XP util. After failing to get it to work, I used the Belkin util and was able to get it to work.

I don't think I'm getting 3hrs of battery life. XP give me about 1.5 hours. Maybe I need to recalibrate it. Anyone else have this problem?

Has anyone installed RedHat on this machine? Is it possible? From what I have been reading it doesn't seem like a good posibility. :(

What is the max for ram?

I got this laptop a month ago from futureshop and it is awesome!! Yeah the heating is a problem when you play games!! But don't worrie about it, if your roomis cold turn on the laptop and play a game to heat up. The graphic card could have been a bit better though. One other problem is that the fan is so loud and seems to always be on.

The battery life is less while playing games on all laptops because it has to power many different parts of the computer, like the video card ect..THINK ABOUT IT. and don't cry when it runs out after 1.2 hours of top of the line graphics.

I love this laptop and never had it freeze yet, it is the best price for it's quility. The battery charges really fast, 3 hours for the first charge and less after that.

Don't wine over the wireless stuff, wireless is way slower then the cable still.

Got mine at Best Buys a week ago. Great machine with a few strange issues. Upgraded the XP-Home to XP-Pro and that worked perfectly - no driver or other issues at all. But then, I installed Microsoft's Beta 2 of Office 2003. None of the Office 2003 applications would come up at all. Got an error with a reference and comment that the appl. was shutting down. I had installed the Beta on my Sony Vaio 505 machine and it worked great. I removed the Beta from the 5305 and installed Office XP Pro and it works great. I would be interested if anyone else has tried to install the beta 2 Office 2003 on this machine or a machine with an AMD processor and what the results were.

I use the machine for business stuff but also for electronic music, using Cakewalk's Sonar-2. The Vaio had worked well with Sonar but did not have the horsepower to let me add effects, etc. This machine certainly takes care of that problem, but has another one. Three times (and of course, during a gig) - the audio locked up and I got a cyclic buzzing sound. The machine was completely locked up but if I waited about 15 seconds, it cleared and the music audio sequence proceeded. I haven't played with foreground/background settings yet but plan to.

I agree with all the positive comments above - this notebook is truly incredible for the price. It is very solid feeling and its screen and features make me forget that I have been using a 3.5 pound Vaio for a year. This is my first AMD processor machine so I'm interested to see what - if any - issues I find with that.

As a follow-up comment regarding wireless, I use a Sony wireless card and it installed and set up without a single issue and works perfectly. Another nice thing about the Sony card is that the antenna does not stick out the side of the machine to be easily broken off. Instead, the antenna hugs up against the side of the notebook PCMCIA slot. The config software is very easy to use and the card is reliable. I have not tried wireless in XP-Home (my O/S on this 5305 notebook is XP-Pro) but have been told that configuring wireless in the home edition is harder. For me, setting up the Sony card was less than a two-minute process.

Hmm, wish I had several wireless cards to experiment with. I got a Linksys card, but if it won't work, I'll forget it for now. We have a Linksys hub at work running on 98se, so I don't know if running XP Home would be an issue. I'll look for the Sony card. I love my machine - screen is great (one pix out), and the CD-RW needed a driver reload to work for burns. Customer support is great for me, and fast. With rebates, it ran me $950.00 (+ tax), not much more than Lindows Mobile PC, and it seems to run Cakewalk Sonar 2.2 fine. I haven't had any probs with Sonar hanging, but haven't recorded waves yet. I'll look for a decent USB 2.0 sound/midi card. On board sound chip will not share synth using WDM driver in Sonar - no biggy. I got mine for scratch pad recording, "off-line" editing, mail, and DVD play. I love it! Seems like it will last a long time. I've still got XT floppy portables.

I really like this unit and have had no problems at all with it. The dlink airplus wireless card worked with no problems and dlink just added a 4x upgrade to their driver (if your using airplus products of course). The screen is amazing about the only two thing I wish it had are built in wireless and better video graphics chip with on board memory but thats why the unit would cost more than $999.00 I guess. Overall im satisfied.

I was lucky enough to purchase a floor model unit from Circuit City for $1049 with $200 in rebates!!! I can't complain at all with this computer for $850. The screen is awesome and the DVD playback is great. I think anyone who is disapponted with this units performance is more than likely a techie who has been spoiled with higher end models. I replaced my presario 700 with this unit and am extremely happy with my purchase. Glad to see all the feedback regarding wireless issues as that will be my next upgrade. My only concern with this modeln is why is it being discontinued already at Circuit City and Best Buy? Hopefully it holds up for a couple years for me at least. Love the wIIIIIde screen!

I think the emachine is great. Does anyone have suggestions or tips for getting graphics in RedHat9 to work?

This is my first laptop, and overall I'm very pleased. Seems well-built and sturdy. Very quick performance with a beautiful screen. My only gripe would be the slightly noisy fan, though this might be normal for laptops. I wouldn't know.

To address the wireless issue others mentioned above, I had no problems. I stuck my Netgear card into the slot, inserted the driver disc when prompted, and that was it. It's working flawlessly with my Netgear hub.

$950 after the mail-in rebates, with the closest model at Best Buy being a Compaq for over $1500. Can't beat that if you ask me.

Purchased today from Best Buy, Floor model they claimed only received 2 and sold 1. Screen size is a plus, I purchased to use for my business. I use GOTOMYPC to connect to my office, had to update MS VM, Yes it runs hot and a little noise from the fan. I paid $1089 less $100 rebate? I saw someone receive a $200 rebate, need to check into that, could always use an extra $100. I have always purchased Emachine Desktop, this is my 4th Emachine. I think all those salespeople who bad mouth emachines just want to make a bigger sale, Thay always say they don't get commission, but we all know no sell no job, they still have sales quota's so if your looking to buy do some research first.

Great machine, can't beat it for the price, got mine off Ebay brand new sealed for 990.00 saves me having to do all those rebates which take forever or never come. half the price of a dell with comparable setup. All laptops are outdated the second you walk out the store so I thought why bother spending a bundle on one I'd just be throwing money away. I use dells and emachines on our corporate network and they are both excellent. Emachine has improved alot since they first came out. Their first ones were junk but now they have improved alot. I am running XP Pro on my M5305 installed no problem and have nero burning rom installed along with all my admin paks. Wide screen is great for multiple terminal sessions. I can barely hear my fan and it runs great running.

For anyone who's interested in running RedHat 9 on this machine, see http://home.nc.rr.com/mitchel/Linux-on-the-eMachines-M5305.html.

The darn link is not supposed to have a dot at the end. Try this: http://home.nc.rr.com/mitchel/Linux-on-the-eMachines-M5305.html

With all the talk of rebates why don't we share with one another how you got ours. I bought mine from Costco for $1150 but no rebate was offerred.

Thanks

I bought mine at Circuit City and recieved a $100 rebate from Circuit City and a $100 rebate from eMachines. Just to let ya know.

Bob

Great notebook... I've been lugging it between cities since May and it's performed flawlessly under both Windows XP Home and Redhat Linux 9.0. I can address the following though:

1. Linksys wireless works fine as far as I can tell. I had to convince XP that the Linksys adapter was OK, and everyone is happy. FYI, I'm running 802.3b...

2. RH9 will install fine on the box as-is. There is a patch for the ATI Radeon IGP 320M driver support that didn't make it into the XFree86 4.3.0 release, and isn't bundled with RK9. Hit Redhat, do a search from home page on "ati radeon igp" and a nice article should come up on where to get the patches and how to install... Took 3 mins after reading the article and X is up at 1280x800x32.

3. RH9 doesn't recognize the Broadcom chipset - I'm still poking around looking for a patch. (Just installed RH9 this past weekend, so I haven't been hurting too bad yet with the CDRW acting as my data transfer for what I'm working on.) Let me know if you have found one already!

Otherwise, bang for the buck and usability - I'm quite happy! And I've worked with IBM, Dell, and Toshiba notebooks in the past.

Does Win2K work on the 5305/5310? Has anyone installed it successfully?

Thanks, Neil

Ok, I was totally out in left field when it came to this wireless networking. Just got the E-machine from Best Buy. I have a desk top with cable internet. What do I have to buy now so i can use the internet on the notebook? Is this an easy task or have I got myself into more than I can handle

I've had this machine, with the WiFi-G config for about a week, (from Best Buy ~1K$US). I tried to do my research and I'm satisfied I got a good value.

The machine has been rock steady, and the WEP and Broadcom wireless trouble free.

I think this is probably a good value propositon buy. Wide screen, fast wireless, CDR/DVD and a reasonable amount of RAM.

We've got this as a family machine, and the family is happy.

Good luck.

= C

I got my M5310 couple of days ago. Everything works great except the wireless - it turns off every 5 mins and I have to maually connect it to keep wireless connected. Do anyone know how to fix this problem? This happens when downloading a large files such as windows xp updates. Other than that this is a solid machine.

Does anyone know the diff in the 5305 and 5310? We just picked up a 5310 at best buy and love it. Great laptop. Much nicer than the Dell Latitude I was given at work. XP is taking some getting used to, wish Microsoft would stop trying to make their OS as if everyone was an idiot.

looks good, but my power cord is REALLY loose at the machine (male end slips out of female connector with the slightest motion).

Just bought the eMachine 5310 and wanted to dual boot RedHat Linux 9 on the system. The installation went smoothly but when it cam time to 'really get into RedHat the screen would not appear. I set the resolution 1024x780. The screen is a 15.4" display - is there a work around to get RedHat to work. Email me. Thanks

I just bought my 5310 last week and have been using it ever since. One thing is the heat that it produces when it's being used to the fullest; however it never flickered in performance.
I even tried some 3D games on their highest settings and it still ran smoothly.
I took it to work and everyone ,at first, looked down on it and asked why I bought JUST an emachine. But after showing them the specs. and a full demo of what it could do, they were somewhat in awe because they felt "robbed" when they found out how much it costed compared to their Dell's, Toshiba, and VIAOs. I guess that puts me .4 (as in the monitor's 15.4) of an inch ahead of them(figuratively and literally). v Ü v

I bought the M5305 from Costco in May. It has worked fine for the last 6 monthes, however, recently it has had difficulty waking up from hibernation or sleep mode. I often resort to disconnecting the power cord and releasing the battery to re-start...emachine customer service recommended to disable hibernation which didn't seem to help the situation. So now i'm thinking of returning it given the 6-month return policy at costco...but it will be hard to get used to a smaller sized screen. Anyone have any idea what might be wrong..and how i can possibly deal with this without sending it out to get fixed or returning it? The computer has been great overall...and is able to run several complex statistical programs with few problems. Would like to keep it. Unfortunately, Costco no longer stocks the M305 or M310.

I have a M5305 that I purchased from best buy. It runs great on all the programs except when I run a game. Anything from warcraft to freecell it just shuts down. I have tried everything to fix it. I am not sure what is causing the problem. Does anybody have a suggestion on what I could try or what the problem is?

I have the 5310 emachine. How long does everyones
battery last....thanks

Wonderful price, intelligent design. And definitely satisfying. But unfortunately, when I try to play 3D games, it heats and after 15 min. power goes off. We will see how its customer service and warranty will work!!

For linux users: Believe or not, I have solved the screen resolution problem! But wireless and 3D is still a problem, which is common for other laptops too... The screen resolution is really cool under linux, yeah, I mean much better than windowsXP! I don't know how??...

Enjoy it!

i have the 5310 and have been generally satisfied with the overall value of this computer. however, as others have experienced, i can not play 3d games. i have Rise of Nations and Railroad Tycoon 3 and both power my machine off after about 10-15 minutes. anybody have an idea how to resolve this problem?

TigerDirect just sent me an e-blurb on the eMachines notebook they're selling for $999.00. But these are refurbs! I'd always thought TD was pretty good on bargains, but...

I was going to buy one for playing games, especially on long flights, but after reading about the experiences of owners on this board, I've decided against it. Thanks a bunch for the info!

Got the 5310 a few weeks ago, similar to the 5305, cept mine has 54g and a firewire port. After the rebate at best buy, I paid $1,050. Couldn't ask for anything more in a laptop for what I need. Great graphics, light, not too loud, i love it.

C

I just got the M5312 from Best Buy. I am uncertain as to whether I want to keep it or take it back and get the Toshiba A35-S159. Does anyone know if the M5312 has expandable RAM? Please email me with answers to my questions.

The M5310s at Tiger Direct are recertified, not reconditioned.

The M5310s at Tiger Direct are recertified, not reconditioned.

I have been quite annoyed at the oveerheating problem of this laptop lately. It is beginning to shut down even when running simple program like typing tutor which shouldn't be too cpu intensive by any means.

Also a few people have been complaining about the running fans. I looked into it and personally I found out that in my device manager the device that controls Powernow isn't initalizing properly.

It took me a while but eventually I found a way to install Powernow properly. Now when the compouter is idle it clocks down a little bit thus creating very little heat and my cpu fan does turn off and the system is quieter.

My problem now is the overheat issue. I have a feeling if i can underclock this thing 200mhz it will hopefully prevent that from happening (heat is squared in corralation to speed) So I'm looking into finding out how to mess with my clock speed. Hopefully it's not locked like I'm already assuming it is. :(

If anyone can offer any soluitions to Stepping down the multiplier or bus speed please let met know

Information I've obtained so far towards this end is
Motherboard type is Arima W720K (Arima doesn't even label itself as a mainboard manufacturer and offers no suppoert)
And the bios is Phoenix 4.0 6 (i thinki something like that)
please e-mail me if you have any further information...

Martin Corona
koolfire007@hotmail.com (sorry for erros or confusion i typed this in a hurry)

Got mine from tigerdirect , a recert , Had virus right out of the box! tech support was excellent and machine works perfect. My former was a thinkpad 600, and compares in weight, speed excellent,good value for money if it lasts.

M5305 Overheats, overheats, and overheats again. I have not had such a bad experience with a computer in many years. Any time the processor is at 100% for more than 5 minutes straight the thing overheats and shuts down.

I don't even play 3D-games! Mine overheats when Acrobat PDF files take too long to load in Internet Explorer. It overheats if it is booted up and spends too much time waiting for someone to log in. It is practically unusable for real work. Next time I make it to the US (I am in New Zealand) I'm going straight to Best Buy to get a replacement.

I cannot find whether the 40 gb HD on my 5205 is 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM can anyone fill me in on that?

I have had mine since May and have no problems with it. Very good for the money:)

Thanks for the help:)

^^I heard somewhere it was stated as 5400rpm HD, could be wrong.^^

The members of an eMachines notebook group I joined, discovered that the major(but there could be other factors) cause of over heating was dust(skin flakes, some times even hair) trapped inside the machine. The dust problem seemed apperent in many thin-style notebooks and is possibly due to strong fans and lack of room for airflow while in a dusty environment. They discovered that after opening and cleaning the board and processer area the machine ran cooler again. There were other suggestions as well, such as not blocking the bottom intakes, new thermal paste/tape, etc..., but simply cleaning the insides seemed to help those with an overheating problem.
Word of caution opening a notebook is sometimes tricker than opening a desktop.

I have fixed the overheating problem on my emachine m5310 laptop.
I made a how to guide for others to be able to fix their problem as well
It can be found at http://coronam.myftp.org/heatfix

Good luck!

Hi. I am having the same overheating problem as everyone else on my 5310. Everything, other than my notebook shutting down while playing games, is great about this computer. I was glad to see that there was a solution here by "corronax", but the link doesnt seem to be working. If you could fix the link or fix whatever the problem is, I would be very thankful, as I want to fix this problem as soon as possible.

Thanks corronaX for the interesting read. link is working.

I am also have the overheating problem, it started with games only, but I have seen it shut down while using other apps also lately. I emailed emachines support, and received back a confirmation, but never any support. nice. guess I am going to have to fork over some mobile time and call these guys to get a responce. pretty shabby service.

Love the machine except for this (huge) problem. It's not encouraging to see how many are having the same problem. guess that explains why they didn't answer my request for support!

When I call them I will post the responce here.

I paid for 3 years of service, they are dm well going to fix this thing!

I got a M5105 and all I wish is the Super Loud Fan wasnt so LOUD!!!! whats with that?@#$@#$@#$

Q: Dose the newer version M5312 have the same over heating problem? I play games and watch DVDs and do spread sheets and word processing and photos for work. Will this system work for me and will it be capable of playing Half Life 2 when ever it is released lol.

I have a two week old M5312. Yep, the fan is loud and annoying, kicking in about every minute whether the CPU is idle or not. Emachine support told me to send it in to their warehouse in Texas for testing. Unfortunately, they have a two week turn around. To send, or not to send...

I cannot believe that everyone is having the same overheating problem that I am! I have had my eMachines M5310 for about 5 months and I have been VERY happy with it. When I thought I was having problems (wireless card, etc), I was able to get through to tech support and have the problem fixed in minutes.
One month ago, the machine started overheating and shutting down immediately. I called tech support, reset the BIOS and was told to call back if the problem persisted. Well, it is still going on! I will look at CoronaX's fix to see if that helps. This is frustrating, but all in all, if I can fix this problem, the laptop is worth it! $850 is not bad at all!

I purchased my M5310 from Best Buy last October.

Like so many others, I am experiencing the same overheat issue. It seems to happen no matter what app I am in from Internet Explorer to Adobe Photoshop.

The easy signal that I am about to get a shutdown is when the fan really starts to kick in and run ultra fast and loud. It is then that I know that I need to save whatever I am working on.

I have called emachines tech support (in fact I am on hold with them as I write this) and the rep I spoke with claimed not to have heard of this issue before... so I have referred him to this page so that he can see how many people are having the issue.

My problem is that I purchased the machine for mission critical apps and unfortunately I can't rely on the machine so I think I will be heading back to Best Buy to return this one for something else.

The bad part is that I really really really liked EMachine. If they ever get this issue resolved in a later model, I would probably buy from them again.

What about the new verson eMachines M5312. Does it have the same problem. Yeah i called the same hotline and they guy acted like he never heard a compliant of this sort.

Hey, where is the place to get the lowest price on the M5312 laptop??? Im in the market for purchaing one and joining the ranks of you happy emachine owners.. I have been going around and around with Best buy, they seem to have billing issues that they cause.. So.. I would like to know where else to look.. Hopefully and save a few $'s.. Thanks..MIchael

First off I would state DO NOT IN YOUR RIGHT MIND BUY THIS PRODUCT...

I bought mine for school, about 5 months ago, I trust emachine because I have had a tower by them that I've had since I was 12 and still works fine with only minor glitches now and then.

This machine worked fine, for about 3 months, after that it would shut down when it was in use for six hours or more, after a while it would shutdown after being cold for two days and running it for ten minutes, then it would only shutdown when I went to play Ragnarok Online. Then it would just stop turning on, I would press the button about 30 times and it wouldn't start. I took it to Best Buy and they said they don't have the authorization to fix it..

Basically I'm trading it in and recommend no one buys one.

I'm having the same problem with my emachines m5310 overheating but I the link posted by CorronaX. Could anyone help with the instructions that he had posted.

Thanks
Alan

This cursed problem I have continued to experience also and running much of my business from my laptop makes this a big problem. One thing I have done to help the overheating problem is to set the power options in control panel. However this lowers the cpu speed and I shouldnt have to do that just to keep my computer running.

I don't know why my previous post got so munged up. Could anyone post the info that corronaX had posted. I can't get the link to work.

My name is Vic ....
I eat your soul ................

I also hate this overheating laptop piece of shit 5310 emachine bullshit. when will things work the way they should. I want all your people to call e machines non stop till they attend to and replace all of our laptops with a working replacement contact me at mentholspirits@aol.com

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

overheating is a huge problem. is there some kind of cooling pad that i could possibly stick by the vents on the bottom? this is my first laptop so i wouldnt know, but why put intake vents on the bottom where your "lap" would be? it shuts off on me everynow and then which really pisses me off since im on emule. emule+winamp+aim=overheat. its ridiculous. another thing i noticed is when i goto control panel, system it shows "Mobile AMD Athlon 2400+" BUT under that it says 661 mhz and only 448MB Ram. whats this all about? besides the overheating im satisfied with the laptop, the display is amazing and im happy with the speed (if im getting the correct speed according to my system in control panel, im not too sure. does anyone else see this?) u cant beat the price though!

by the way, i have the 5312. sorry ;]

The overheating problem u have can be solved if you call tech support and send it to emachines. and the 661 mhz thing is because it has POWERNOW! technology. The more you use your laptop the ffaster it will get. if it always ran at 1800 mhz then ur battery would only last u an hour. Ur 448 of ram is because 64 is shared with the video chip. 448 + 64 = 512...

thanx for your reply Nimit. It was very informative. I refuse to send my laptop out though. I guess I just cant live without for a couple weeks. Id probably go insane ;). Have you done so? if so, do they tell you what they did? im thinkin about just waiting until the mfg warranty is up and open it up to clean it from dust and possibly try the trick with the vents listed somewhere above. i would really like to send it out but i also dont want someone browsing through my HD. thanx for the reply. youve been a huge help

I've been having all the same shutting down/overheating issues as all you guys so I won't even explain the situation. I'm just wondering, if any of you have sent out ur laptop, how long did it take for you to get it back? Besides that, is there any other way I can fix this problem? Say I go to my bios, then what do I do once I get to that screen? If there are any programs I can download to help cool down the computer, please let me know?

This overheating thing is bullshit and I thinkwe should all get together and file a class action suit on Emachines ass. This send the laptop away for two weeks is rediculous. I a car manufacture produced a car with a know issue like this and the response for the repair was to send your car away for two week, I guarantee there would be a lawsuit and this machine is more important to me and my business than any automobile.

Thanks for the warnings on the overheating. I was about to put out really hard earned cash on one of these as my first laptop. I think I'll wait and see how this works out. Everything about it looked good but the e machine reputation had me hesitating and this forum is re-inforcing that. Hope they get it figured out. Thanks.

I've been hesitant as well after reading the comments here. The m5312 has great specs. Initially, I saw it at Best Buy for $1250 with $150 rebate. That brought it to $1100, which is a great price. I just checked last night and the rebate is now $250. $1000 is an oustanding price, but still not worth it if it has a major overheating problem. What a predicament?

Having the same overheating issue. I'd be more than willing to get together with people and go after emachines for this. This is absolutely ridiculous, I can't afford to not have a computer for however long it will take them. I KNEW I should have stuck out the extra cash and gone with a better name brand.

I bought this for school, and managing my buisness... now I can't use it for anything.

I too have the heating problem. It is such a fundamental flaw in the design, that I am assuming there will one of two things. Either a class action lawsuit or a product recall. Any body interesting in putting names together for the one or the other.

I'm in. The 5310 is poorly designed. Did they test this thing on the north pole. I've got two large desk fans running full tilt across it with spacers keeping the laptop suspended an inch above my desk. I don't even bother trying to run games on it . . . forget Winamp or Media player. This thing even overheats while viewing PDF files with nothing else running. I'm trying to get it exchanged for a different model or something. I even put ice packs under it and it reset just doing a defrag and nothing else. I'll let you guys know how it works out.

Ray

Don't bother with fans or anything for the M5310. I've experimented with shutdown time and it has absolutely no effect.

Putting four ice packs under the laptop along wth two fans delayed overheat by about 20 seconds so don't bother with any of that stuff.

I just talked to someone at eMachines customer support (don't bother with the online chat people)

The told me that I can send it in and they'll fix the problem - no laptop for a week or two.

Anyone get that link for opening up the lab top?

I also have an overheating issue... probably not as bad as yours. I use a fanpad and that keeps it at a nice 36 degrees... don't even try to run games... they don't work.

The fan is noisy like a plane going over my house. It's crazy.

Can anyone get that opening up labtop and fixing fan link? Or direct me on how to get the labtop fixed. I'm from Canada.... I don't think they'll take my product in and fix it.... akk!

Thanks

Hey... perhaps someone should make a website about emachine notebooks and their problems... put a forum up. There seems to be a lot of interested parties here.

If you coordinated something through this website... I think emachines would listen.

As an update, I have spoken with e-machines and I am sending the unit back for repair. They sent me a postage paid box and they say one week max from where I am located. In fairness I can say that the tech support has been good, quick response. I don't have a problem sending it in, as long as it comes back fixed. I will let everyone know what happens.

I have been looking at the new m6805, and I came across a help site specially made for eMachines that has a forum if anyone is interested. http://www.e4all.info/

Not sure if this is possible that this is the same problem, but I had a problem with my own (Dell) laptop heating up very quickly as described, and I have traced it down to a single service.

Has anyone checked their processes list in XP to see if anything is pulling 100% CPU for no apparent reason (when the problem is about to occur)? There is a service called "Microsoft Indexing Service" (cisvc.exe) that I have found to be a problem on a great deal of XP-Based machines. It is worth a shot to check out, because I have seen performance problems on quite a few desktops due to this process.

To disable it, do the following:
1. Start, Run..., and type "services.msc" and hit enter.
2. Look until you find "Indexing Service," right click it, and go to Properties.
3. Change the "Startup Type" to "Manual," hit Apply and OK, then close the Services window.

It could of course be a hardware issue, but I would like to try getting this out of the way first. All that process does is "Indexes contents and properties of files on local and remote computers; provides rapid access to files through flexible querying language." It is not required, and often creates more trouble than it is worth.

Good luck, and be careful in the Services program... You don't want to disable something your computer actually needs. Let me know if it works.

It can also show up as cidaemon.exe when you go to change it to manual.

A follow up. I just got my laptop back from tech service. It was gone less than a week round trip (well over 1000 miles). Sent it in for the overheat problem (which got worse and worse until I broke down and sent it in). Seems to be completely fixed. I hope it stays that way, but for now I am very pleased. I am amazed at how fast they got this back to me. I guess they have it figured out and a fix ready to go because they could not have had my machine for over 24 hours in their shop if you take in account ship time.
Happy with service all in all, after I got past all the layers of 'have you tried this?'... 'yes, I tried everything, just give me an RMA' conversation that was going on.

glad it's back :)

The tech guy I spoke with was very informative. It seems that the heatsink and ventilation are inadequate. He said the shutdown times (which occured only while I played games) I was experiencing were getting shorter because the processor was likely damage during previous overheatings. Initially, I could play a game for hours on end. Then it started shutting down after 30 minutes or so. Finally, I was lucky if the game would stay on for just a few minutes.

He informed me that the fix entailed replacing the motherboard, processor, and fitting it with a new and improved heatsink. I was told turnaround time is about 4 to 5 business days once they receive the laptop. Its been only two days since they’ve had it; so I’ll try to keep everyone posted so they can see if E-machines pulls through with a timely repair.

I’m disappointed about the overheating issue, but otherwise have been very pleased with the laptop itself. Customer service has been excellent and I haven’t had any complaints so far. I just have to keep my fingers crossed.

When I arrived home from work today, my laptop had arrived to my surprise. I FedExed it out on Monday and received it back on Thursday. I tested it with Age of Empires II to see if it would overheat or not. I started the game and left it on for 2 1/2 hours. When I returned the laptop was still on. Prior to sending it in for repair it would have stayed on for 5 minutes at best.

Seems to be working fine.

Hope things work out for the rest of you. Good Luck.

When I arrived home from work today, my laptop had arrived to my surprise. I FedExed it out on Monday and received it back on Thursday. I tested it with Age of Empires II to see if it would overheat or not. I started the game and left it on for 2 1/2 hours. When I returned the laptop was still on. Prior to sending it in for repair it would have stayed on for 5 minutes at best.

Seems to be working fine.

Hope things work out for the rest of you. Good Luck.

Kevin, before the fix it would overheat even without windows running... you could boot to a dos prompt, walk away for 5 min. and it was dead.
Anybody else notice that the screen does not dim out now when you run on battery power? nice unexpected change..

Has anybody found a proper linux driver for the graphics?

On a side note, eMachines was bought today by Gateway. scary.

Wow, thats pretty bad... At least it is all fixed now for the people who sent it in. The only thing I could say to watch out for is dust if this is a problem that seemed to develop over time... It may happen again if it was a gradual thing.

Sounds like there may have been a major case flaw, but it seems like they may have replaced more than just some basic parts... so that should be good.

About the Gateway buyout... It looks like Wayne Inouye is the CEO over there now, so this should be interesting. I am going to have to run out and buy my m6805 ASAP if they are going to do any changes soon (anyone know if the brand is going to be revamped)? Either way... I'd better get it before the quality goes downhill again.

Bigthumb,

I noticed that the laptop top remembers what screen brightness level was set when either in battery or regular power mode. If the screen was dimmed or brightend when it was running on battery it switches back to the level when the battery is activated. Visa versa for when it is on regular power.

Interesting FYI,

I had one bad pixel on my screen when I sent it in for the overheating problem. I did not mentioned it e-machines because it was only noticeable when the screen background was black and I had grown used to it so I totally forgot about it. I just happened to notice that the bad pixel is now gone, and upon closer examination it appears they replaced the screen.

I, Too am having the overheating shutdown problem. I have a bigger problem becuase I bought mine from Tiger Direct as a recert(The Serial number shows refurbished) and it is now outside of warranty. Anyone know if eMachines will still fix it because of all of the problems that folks are having with these even after the warranty has expired? This laptop is a great value if it would just work!

I have decided to send my overheating m5312 to emachines after a few days of debate. I received the box and shipping material from emachines today and I am going to be sending it out very shortly. My question is for the people who have sent it out already and have received there laptop after the fix. Was anything on the hard drive affected in anyway? I have a lot of important information on my computer and don't want to sacrifice it being lost or corrupted. I would burn it all if the damn thing wouldn't overheat! Is the hard drive affected in anyway when they service the laptop? I need to know this before I send it out. Thanks in advance.

Well heres another for the list. I have had my 5310 for 2 and a half months now and it has worked great. Last night it shut down on me and now will shut down every time about 4 minutes after reboot. The problem is I am now working in Saudi Arabia Sending it back is a major pain. I really nead to at least try and get some critical info off the drive. Anybody have any ideas to delay the shut down. How do you slow the clock?

This is also a recertified machine from tigerdirect.

Don

I have been having the same overheating issue in my M5310. It is at Best Buy right now getting "fixed" for an unrelated issue, an unmountable boot volume. I mentioned to them about the overheating, but they didn't seem to understand that the overheating heating is unrelated to the hard drive error. Anyway, when I get my laptop back, hopefully tomorrow, I will be calling Emachines tech to send it in for repair. When I get it back from repair, I will most likely be selling it. I don't recommend emachines, and will not be buying anything built by them again. They should have known about the issue of overheating, if they would have tested the laptops prior to us buying them. Even the newer M5312 has the overheating problem, I don't understand how they could have overlooked it.

I have had the same over heat problem with my m5310. I love the laptop except for this problem and I am very dissapointed with customer service. When they sent out my RMA box to send it back for repair, they forgot to put thier FED EX account number on the return slip.That sounds like no big deal except they refused to give me the number over the phone so I could write it on the slip. They insisted on sending me a new label instead. (but wait it gets better!) When FED EX tried to deliver my new label, they wouldn't leave it because Emachines had asked for a signature. So, I had to wait another day and stay home to get it. Finally when I got my new label it was the wrong one!! They sent me a ground label!! (they have different account numbers on them so it was no use to me). So, when I called back I got more rude people on the phone telling me they wouldn't give me the number over the phone because it would be a "security issue". 7 days had gone by before I could get my laptop in the mail!! When I got the correct label the account number was printed on it clearly...so what's the big secret?
So, I sent it yesterday and I hope they fix it because I like the laptop otherwise; however, they have lost a repeat customer because of thier attitude.
By the way, if anyone else calls in to Emachines with this overheating problem, they will tell you that they haven't heard of it before...which is B.S.
Thanks for listening to me bitch

I got a phone call from best buy saying that my laptop had to be sent off to be repaired and it could take up to 4-weeks to come back. I still don't know if they will have the overheating fixed, becouse they still insist that it is a hard drive issue. Anyway, hopefully when they try to install xp it will shut off for them like it did with me when I tried to install xp pro (I ended up going outside in the cold to get it to finish the install without shuting off). I havn't contacted emachines except through email, and they responded with this

"Thank you for contacting eMachines.

I understand that you have issues with your computer overheating and had sent your system for repairs and hoping that the overheating issue would be resolved. You also would want to know how to contact our Corporate Office.

I know this is very frustrating however, with any product on the market today especially a complex device such as a computer there is always the possibility of issues with that product. Your warranty support options (Email, Live Chat and Phone support) are all put in place for this very reason.

You can contact our Corporate Office at 801-401-1199. They are not able to provide troubleshooting assistance for your computer at this number.

I hope this information is helpful in addressing your concerns.

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

I have sent my emachine m5310 back for repair for the overheating issue. It should be back any day now. For those of you wanting to know how the repair went and what they did to solve the problem, I will post a message here when I get it back. I too had some indecision about buying a name that was not as recognized as the big guys and I'm beggining to wonder if I shouldn't have listened to that little voice. If this machine is not fixed to my satisfaction then I will be in contact with some of the other people who have posted to this forum to see what else can be done. Perhaps there is some legal recourse.

This is a quoted response from an emachines live chat agent. I asked them...

BEGIN QUOTE

"I recently fould out that many emachines owners are having the same overheating problem that I have. Does emachines plan a recall?"-me

"im not aware of a recall"-agent

"Please Read The Following Information.

The reason your note book system powers down without warning is because it is overheating. When the system reaches a certain temperature it will shut it self down to avoid damage to the system. Below are some of the most common causes of overheating and some suggestions on how to take care of them.

When using the note book please make sure that it is getting plenty of air circulation.

Do not use the note book on any kind of surface that will not allow it to breath. (Ex. A bed, your lap, on top a of a pillow.)

Several of our customers have reported that buying a work station for note book computers improves the performance of their computer. These work stations can be purchased at an office supply store, they work by constantly letting air flow underneath the note book.

When you play a 3D game on your note book the video card and CPU are in their highest state of use. This will cause them to get very hot, it is a good idea to keep a house hold fan blowing air towards the back of the note book at all times if you are playing an intense 3D game.

Download the AMD Power Now update from Microsoft.com. For more information click here

Note: If you have followed all of these precautions and your M series note book is still shutting down please call the note book support line at (801) 401-1419."-agent

END QUOTE

Although this doesn't really help a whole lot, this is the best responce I have had thus far from emachines. I will be calling the support line when I get my machine back. I will discus their response in detail. I do believe there should be some type of legal reason for them to issue a recall, since I believe that all emachines from the M5305-M5312 have the problem.

Hi,
I posted an angry note a couple of days ago.
I was the person having the problem getting the right shipping label.
Anyway, It left Mass. on monday night at 5pm.
I tracked it and it was recived in Texas at 8:30 tuesday morning.
Belive it or not I recived my laptop back on Wed.afternoon at 2pm. I couldn't belive it

The good new is it is all fixed. It doesn't overheat at all. I can run all the apps I couldn't before.

So, don't hesitate to send it in for the repair.
Good luck,
Steve

I'm glad to hear that your laptop is fixed. I can't wait to get mine back from best buy. I should have just called emachines :( :( I have up to three more weeks to wait. Oh well, I guess it's worth the wait if it comes back fixed.

Im still going to buy one!!!

This is a follow up to my post on January 26th.

After talking to three different people at eMachine, all with completely different answers as to what I should do about the overheating problem. I brought the M5310 in for servicing at the Best Buy where I had purchased it. They were very helpful and they shipped it to have the heat sink replaced. Two weeks later Best Buy called to tell me that eMachines returned the notebook unmodified.

Best Buy offered to refund my money which I will put toward the purchase toward a new notebook. Thankfully they are no longer carying eMachines notebooks in their Canadian stores so I won't be tempted to make the same mistake again.

I had no problem with the M5310 notebook - or even the fact that it shipped with a defect. eMachines customer service, instead of trying to get me back up an running again simply tried to avoid helping me by lying to me about the solution. I'm no lab technician but if you test your overheat problem with a stopwatch you'll find that following their advice does not prevent overheating. In my case it only delayed the shutdown by about a second - even with the notebook resting on ice packs! Only one customer service representative agreed that running a desk fan and raising the notebook to provide more ventilation does absolutely nothing to prevent overheating.

Why are they still telling people to run a fan to solve the problem?

a) Nobody at eMachines actually tried the desk fan solution to see if it solves the problem so they genuinely think it's healping people. Why else would they continue to offer it as a solution?

b) Somebody forgot to tell the customer service representatives that their laptops shipped with a defect.

c) eMachines hopes people won't notice that their notebooks overheat.

d) That desk fan solution really does work. I'm just a big idiot who doesn't know how to use a desk fan properly.

To all the people waiting for their notebooks to come back modified, I wish you the best of luck. If you haven't sent it in and you can find a way to switch to a notebook from another company, I recommend it; returning your notebook to eMachines doesn't guarantee that you'll get it back repaired. Why wait two or three weeks without a notebook to find out? Just swap it for something good if you can.

I was suprised to see them suggesting using a desk fan! To me that is an absolutely ridiculous idea. I don't recall seeing "desk fan not included" on the box. That the tech support would even suggest such a hoaky solution is laughable. I'm still waiting for mine back and if it's not fixed the **** is gonna hit the desk fan.

I purchased my M3505 from Tiger Direct and also have the problem with overheating. I just got off thed phone with Tech Support and they are sending me the box for shipping. My happened to still be under warrantee, but I did ask if they would fix this issue if it was not. They will, but it will cost you. Hold time to get a response was 45 SECONDS. Call in and get yours fixed. All Customer service agents were pleasent and wanted to help out as much as possible.

Hello all.
I purchased an m5312 back in December. Been pretty happy with it *except* for this cd/dvd drive. I'll stick all sorts of cd's in it (retail or cdrw's, doesn't matter" and when I click on the drive icon i get message "The drive is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?". Put in a DVD and it recognizes it right away. Eventaully, maybe a couple of hours after its turned on, it will begin to recognize cds and will run fine. Weird......
Anyone else had trouble this?? Thanks for any feedback.

i have an emachine 5310 and have the same overheat problem. of course it didn't happen until i tried to install xp pro. so you can imagine the problems when half of the files are installed when it overheats. my temporary solution was to put it in the freezer while restoring. the emachine restore cd formats your harddrive however, so you have to back up your harddrive by physically taking it out of your computer and putting it in a removable enclosure harddrive b/c xp no longer loaded up in any mode (safe or not). will be sending my computer back to emachine. best buy support was nonexistent even though i bought the 3 yr extended. the hardware problem (overheating) caused the software problem (halfway install of xp) and they were going to charge $100 for backing up my harddrive before wiping my harddrive to fix the problem. sorry service from bestbuy and emachine.

I was offered the M5312 for 1000 plus 100 rebate for the demo model last one on the floor. Looks clean w/o any probems come complete with warranty. Should I hop on it?

Well, some people have had problems. Make sure you have a warrenty. some ppl don't have problems.. you might be a lucky one. Getting an emachine is sorta like playing russian roulette

I purchased the 5310 in sept. all was fine for 2mo. then the notebook froze up and I had to restart via the power button...bad idea. It rebooted (and like a good windows user) I allowed the scan disk to run; but it began deleting all of the windows index files. upon reboot there was no life in the machine. Best buy also told me it was a software issue that was not covered in my $300 warrenty extent. I paid the 100 bucks for my info and left it at that, as they were able to restore the the hd to the factory settings.

2mo to the day it did the same damn thing this time I didn't save the info and called emachine who told me that it was xp pro and the machine was not desined for pro. (exactly) I sent it in three weeks latter only to have it returned unfixed and having an error when I opened it, spenting a total of 1hr on the phone, three techs, and several restores, they determined that nothing was fixed and that i needed to send it in again last week (they still say that they have not received it in their warehouse) I got the notebook back the second time from their warehouse with no explanation of what was fixed and now the cd rom will not open and I am sending it back for a 3rd time in 3 weeks. I have spoken to them so much in the last three weeks i have had the same tech several times. And don't bother with talking to the supervisor as he only knows what the person answering the phone knows.

I put a call into the number they left on the blank work form they sent with the supposedly repaired machine. which is 714-481-2828

I will update you all on the prgress of this endevor.

se

OMG! That is rediculus. Are you in the states or in Canada?

I heard the company they use to fix in canada is decisionone. Anyone know if they know how to fix anything?

I just heard from "vohn" at emachines customer relations that they just got my info on what was fixed: the heat sync or heat spread and cd rom.

I am sending it back to repair the repair on the cd rom.

I believe that this also proves that they know about the overheating problem. computer leaves tomorrow.

I am in the states. and would love to know who is really fixing these things.
se

I have discovered something with the overheating... if you leave the machine unpluged the cpu stays below 1.0 ghz and it does not freeze up. when i plug it in I have about 4hrs then it freezes up. anybody have any fixes that will let me keep the cpu speed under 1.0 ghz when I plug it in?

I have the overheating problem also. Its pretty damn rediculous. Anyone know how much the fix costs or what number I should call? Thanks...

-Kevin

WARNING: Do not buy an emachines laptop. Their pc's are ok, but their laptops are poorly designed, and unlike dell, they are not stress tested. How else would they have overlooked a serious overheating problem! If you have an emachiens, demand an exchange. When I get mine back from best buy, I will demand an exchange if the overheating still happins. Best buy sent my computer off 2 weeks ago, and I am still waiting for it!!!

WARNING: DO NOT BUY AN EMACHINES LAPTOP!

Well after waiting two weeks I got my m5310 back today. The work order says that they replaced the fan and installed a new heatsink. Everything seems to be fine.I tested it on some graphic intensive games that cause it to overheat before and all seems well. I would say if you are having this problem don't hesitate to send it in for repair. Tell them that you are well aware of the overheating problem and have them install the improved heatsink. Mine was still under warranty so it didn't cost me anything.

Just got my m5312 2 weeks ago. I am a computer tech, and was skeptcal about the emachines at first. I had read both good and bad but decided to take the plunge and pound on one just for the heck of it. I had 2 dell latidudes PII 400s that ran nice and stable. These were quite the road warrior laptops that have literaly traveled across the U.S. with me. They had sentimental value to me but, I decided it was time to move on..so I traded in both at my local laptop exchange. At first I was annoyed at the shared video memory, but with shipped 512, I guess you can share out 32MB or 64MB. I hear the max RAM is 778MB or so, perhaps I will look into upgrading that and see what performance gains I get... I have to say after updating the bundled XP Home with all the fixes and browsing emachines' web site for updated drivers for the broadcom wireless g/b, I so far have been impressed with this machine (for the price of the unit). With my trade-ins the price came to $700.00 bucks and that included the 3 year all inclusive warranty. Wide screen is awsome and DVDs play back perfectly. Very fluid and razor sharp. Wireless G/B connectivity was effortless...it detected the AP points and I just needed to enter in my ESS and Keys and presto instant network. It even found my public library wireless B network and set up itself! (My Library's network had automactically provided needed keys for public access)WOW!
I have not had any problems with shut downs or overheating. Perhaps the m5312 models have been fixed of this. I have ran this unit continually for many hours. The USB 2.0 ports are fantastic. I hooked up my ADS 2.0 capture unit AND my Sony external DVD recordable unit and captured live TV directly to the DVD-R with no problems whatsoever. The AMD XP-M CPU seemed to handle the data flow effortlessly. I have also ripped DVD data and compressed it to make my own DVDs. The speed was almost as fast (only a few minutes longer) as my Desktop P4 2.6Ghz HyperThread with 1GB of RAM. Needless to say I was impressed for a laptop to do this kind of video editing.
I have not had the chance to play any graphic intensive games..so I cant speak to its gaming performance.
The laptop is great for the price and would recommend it to anyone...(although I would purchase extended warrantys just in case)
Overall a 9 rating of this laptop in this price range.

Sounds like you work for emachines Dan.

I suggest you hold the machine for three or four months and wait for it to start shutting down on you

-Jack

Like so many of you I too have a 5305 with an overheating problem. I read the comments about dust and tried that, but to no avail. I then tried putting it on top of a 1KG bag of frozen Mixed Vegetables and it worked a treat. It defrosts the vegetables in no time and you can open more than one application on your laptop.

On a more serious note, like so many system administrators, I’m learning about my own backups the hard way. The overheating has become critical and running any kind of image copy generates too much heat, even with the frozen vegetables.

I contacted Emachines and asked if I could retain the hard disk because it is DEFINITELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HEAT PROBLEM and they offered me the following solution; I can buy a new hard disk which they will send out, swap it in and send the laptop back with the new hard disk, I am that desperate I said yes, but they then told me that they had no disks in stock and didn’t know when they would be getting any.

Come on Emachines, you’ve got a great product but this blows!

The final chapter in the eMachines notebook saga.

Best Buy was really great. They refunded all my money, including the remainder of my three year warranty and I got a Compaq Presario R3000. The screen is the same resolution and quality as the M5310. Great gaming machine too.

Comparing the R3000 to the M5310

The keyboard colours make more sense; black on light gray. Medium gray on dark gray was really hard to see in low light. I usually don't look at the keyboard but when it's a bit dark and you need to find Num Lock, it's nice.

It doesn't have a Christmas Tree full of blue LED's spewing photons at my eyes. Was eMachines trying to appeal to the Honda Civic customizer crowd?

It has a switch to turn the touchpad off. Very necessary.

The speakers sound much better.

You can toggle the radio (wireless LAN) with a button.

What's missing is the definable shortcut buttons. Big deal. My only beef is that the headphone cable is too close to where you might use a mouse if you're right handed. I'm going to make a right-angled headphone adapter to compensate.

To anyone who's considering an eMachines notebook, have a good look at the Compaq R3000 - especially at the price.

I finially recieved a phone call from best buy the other day saying that my laptop came in unfixed. They couldn't tell me exactly why, but I'm sure it was just to much trouble for them to repair. Anyway, they could not offer me anything other than the Emachines M5309 as a replacement. It has allmost everthing the M5310 had, but has the 60GB drive, and AMD Athlon XP 2500+ "barton". (The M5309 also feels lighter, the case also looks a bit different). The only thing I don't like is the fact that it doesn't have built in wireless, I had to spend an extra $60.00 on a PCMCIA wireless g card. I upgraded to XP Pro SP1a as soon as I got home and had no problems with overheating during the install. Overall I am glad to have a laptop again, and I am impressed by the improved "barton" cpu.

I am having the overheating issues too after six months of use. Thanks for all the hints even though I am not suree how to solve this problem. I will call tech support for the third time in three days to see whether they will give me an RMA. In my opinion they should issue a recall and give us all new machines.

Like just about everyone else here, I too had the overheating problem with my M5310 Emachines Notebook. I called tech support on a saturday, the packaging came on monday, I sent it in that day, and received my computer back that friday. They did a fast job, so I commend them for at least swiftly fixing the problem, even though they did majorly screw up by not catching this flaw before release.

here is the number for the emachines return center

909-606-7365

if that will help anyone

I sent in for the cd to be repaired and the thing overheated and froze right before I sent it back so now they are fixing the heat sink (not the heat spread) and the power cord,(I don't know what the power cord has to do with anything should be back on friday or monday...

update 2

se

I have the same overheating problem as everyone else but my laptop is out of warrenty and when i called emachines they hung up on me, has anyone else been able to get there laptop repaired eventhought it's out of warrenty, or does anyone have any advice for me?? i'm only a student and i can't afford to have a laptop that doesn't work and is out of warrenty

Just an update: My M5309 is not overheating, when using always on power setting the fan is on full speed, but the heat coming out of the fan is not as intense, and under the fan is not as hot as my M5310 was. The M5309 does not seem to have the overheating problem, but it could be something that gets worse over time, I remember when I first got my M5310 I installed Linux and it would run for nearly an hour without any powernow drivers loaded and with the cpu and fan at full speed and about six months later the thing would shut off when loading a pdf file!!!. Anyway, I will keep you guys updated. Anyone that has had theirs sent in, did you get a new power setting? I noticed with my M5309 a new power setting called emachines power management.

Good luck Rod trying to get your computer repaired even though it's not under warrenty anymore. I would not give up though, keep calling I guess.

After sending my m5305 in for the overheating issue, it returned in great working order. No more overheating issues. For those of you who are trying to say that this is a software issue-it's not. The problem is the heat sink and the method of cooling both the processor and the graphics at the same time. If you call in and be polite, they are more than willing to help you out with your problem. Just do it - Normal turn around time is 2 days and all your problems with this overheating issue will be over. For those of you who are out of your warrantee, still call and get it fixed. It may cost you a little bit, but at least you'll b e doing something more than just complaining about it.

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION!

******** M5310 OVERHEAT PROBLEM SOLVED *********

A few months ago I reported the same overheat problem in this forum that so many of you have mentioned.

What many of you may have noticed is that the problem starts intemitantly at first after a few months of ownership and then steadily becomes worse and worse.

The problem is caused by a buildup of dust on the components that causes the processor to overheat and thus shut itself down to prevent it from frying.

To fix the issue, just go out and buy a can of compressed air. Blow the air into the exauhst vent in the back of the unit. (When I did mine I got a big cloud of dust). Hit it a few times tio make sure that everything is all cleaned up and Viola! no more overheat problem.

You do not have to open the case to do the cleaning, the vent works just fine. I now dust out my laptop this way about once a week and the problem has gone away...

got the book back and all is well they said that the mother board was to blame for all the problems i was having i will give it some time then see what happens. I did the compressed air before and still the damn thing froze up, maybe I will have better luck with the new board. the cd rom still click and won't open from time to time. we will see how long that takes to cure.

se

Another Update:

My emachines M5309 is doing great. I recently left Knoppix running all day just to see what would happin. Absolutely nothing. The laptop was kept cool. I have gone from completely hating emachines to loving it. This is a great laptop for the price, its amazing. I would never consider buying something else.

I just ordered the new Gentoo 2004.0 which uses the 2.6.3 Linux Kernel. I have allready made room for it by resizing the Windows partition. Having a 60-GB hard drive is great for this. I gave windows 27-GB. Hopefully if all goes well Gentoo will be my primary OS. I will let all of you know how it goes.

Hi for all you Canadian customers. I just called the Canadian customer service (gotta hate the whole long-distance charges since they got no hotline) and they knew exactly what the problem was. Make it clear though, tell them you are aware of the heatsink issue and whether or not they will fix it. They're sending out the FedEx box and I should receive that in 2-3 days (cuz in Canada things are much slower), and then they said it'll probably take 5-7 days... so it'll be like a 2 week delay. That's okay since Futureshop's waranty thing takes like 6 weeks for them to send it back to you with nothing changed. I am trusting that your computers are running well.

Just an update, the overheating problem is caused by dust clogging up the heat exchanger. Someone posted above about using compressed air from the outside to dislodge the dust. The main problem with that is all the dust is still inside the notebook.

If you have no qualms about voiding your warantee (or your warantee is already out) you can easily clean your heat exchanger in a matter of minutes following these instructions:
http://www.dexplor.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=171

I assume eMachines has some "permanent" fix they use when you send your notebook in. So if you are experiencing overheating and your notebook is under warantee then you should definitely send it in.

Dan East

I bought a 5312 at the end of October. I play MOHAA Breakthrough for hours at a time, and have never had a shutdown yet. I've never ever had to reboot this computer except for updates. My brother bought a 5310 in September and he did have the shutdown problem, but we sent it in to emachines on Fri and received it on a Tuesday. That was service.

I send my computer back because of the ovberheating problem and received in or a record time. I send it out on a Thursday and received it on Tuesday. They seem to have fixed it now. Actually I found out they used a program called prime95.exe to evaluate that it works after the fix. What they told me is that the fan went bad.

So if some of you are looking for a real good test for your machine download the program from the primenet which is a search engine using your cpu power to find the next prime number. This is a cool idea that delivers an application running on the background on your machine, cranching some cpu intensive algorithms.
Good test tool since it runs a lot of fft algorithms.

If you need the program let me know and I will send it to you.

I have an emachines 5310 which has been sent in for repairs 4 different times. Of course I am far from happy about this. I did not know what was causing my computer "shut downs" and apparently neither did they (from Nov 2003-Feb 2004). I finally figured out that it shuts down when I'm using THE SIMS game. I talked to a lady at corporate office to explain to her that I would like an exchange or my money back because the machine is so unreliable. Its still under warranty. She says there is no refund policy and that the machine works fine for their techs and that they don't know what the problem could be, maybe that its my software. She asked was the software XP compatable, and was it using too much CPUs. I told her that it shuts down when I run the SIMS and stays off for the whole day or more (it wont power back on!!!). Good grief. I thought It was just ME and my STUPID LAPTOP from EMACHINES. What am I going to do. Best buy offers to diagnose a heat issue, and I read these posts and wonder why EMACHINES didnt offer to fix this for me. They return my laptop and dont even say what they did to test it - so I have to call and see what it was that they "tried" to do the last time. Never once did anyone at Emachines mention a heat issue and the possiblility of fixing that. So, apparently its up to the consumer to DIAGNOSE their own laptop. The first time I sent the laptop in for repairs, it was for shutting down unexpectedly, and, since I HAD TO GUESS WHY (they didnt offer any solution) it was not booting up when plugged in or on battery, I suggested that hey replace the power cord. So it seems I have wasted A LOT of time on the phone with these techs. Second repair was because the CD burner never recognized a disk which I was trying to burn. The CD Burning Wizard FAILED each time I went to burn. I tested about 10 disks over the phone (spent 20.00 in phone bill on the tech line) before they told me I had to restore the hard drive to replace a CD driver. We did that. I backed everything up and restored. Still, a disk would not burn. Turned it in for repair, and they ended up REPLACING the CD BURNER. It never worked, from day one out of the box!!! I thought it was me not having the right software, so I wasted 100.00 on EAsy CD Creator software. What can I say. DONT buy this machine, the service people at emachines are really incompetent and they dont know how to resolve problems very well. I feel like a complete looser for buying this machine. Ive never been so embarrased in my life. If there is a lawsuit against this company, please post where it can be found. if I knew where to sign, I would sign to have them arrested for making this piece of junk.

Just another update.

After a 10 hour install of gentoo linux 2004.0 from scratch my laptop is running great. This proves once again that the overheating has been fixed in the newer Emachines M5309.

It is a little confusing, the M5312 sounds newer b/c of the number, but the M5309 is newer and the problems have been fixed. Anyone that is having problems with the older laptops, I highly recomend you ask for a replacement for the M5309. The Emachines is a great M5309 is a great laptop for the price, after geting the replacement my entire attitude toward emachines has chaged. I understand though that a lot of you are upset mainly over the poor customer service, but emachines customer service is no better than the customer service of other computer makers, though there are certainly some exceptions.

The only thing the M5309 doesn't have is the wireless nic, but a mini-PCI wireless nic can be found for around $60 or less. I bought PCMCIA card for $60, but only because the store was out of mini-PCI nic's.

In all, if I could start all over, I may not have bought an emachines. If I had a choice over the replacement I would have choosen a different make, but the problems do apear to be fixed. I will still keep you people updated.

I SUBMITED THIS LETTER TO EMACHINES...Do you think it could raise some eyebrows, or do think I'm just wasting my time???

My problem begins in August 2003 when I purchased my eMachines. I was walking through the laptop isle of Best Buy and this wide screen M5310 caught my attention. It price, it's specs, awesome! Little did I know what I was getting myself into. If only I had known, I would never had bought this machine.

My first problems began around October of 2003, when I installed (attempted to) install Linux. Ok, I know what you will say, "The emachines is designed for Microsoft Windows XP", but that is total crap. The only thing that could even possibly be considered designed for XP is the winmodem, and the windows keys and there are even ways to make them work. Linux, if configured correctly, has support for all the hardware in the machine, including the cpu's "powernow" feature. So, I attempted to make a duel boot system, Windows XP on 20GB's and Linux on the other 20GB's. The install was going great until the computer shut off unexpectedly. I noticed that the thing was very hot. Of course with the CPU running 100% full throttle, I expect it to get hot, but not overheat. So I gave up on that.

I then started getting shut offs in Windows, while gaming. As the weeks progressed the shut offs would happen sooner and sooner and eventually they would happing about 3 minutes into a game. I know what your going to say again, "try using riser to allow air to flow under the laptop and use a fan and point it toward the back of the laptop"..."blah blah blah" please, don't waste my time, I am not an idiot. You might also say “playing games puts high stress on the cpu and igp” Obviously, but I bought a system with 1.8GHz cpu, I want to use that 1.8GHz. I tried the riser, the fan, nothing helped.

The last time it shut off, around Jan 04', it damaged the hard drive. I took it into best buy, and told them about the problems with overheating, they sent it off, and it came back THREE WEEKS LATER "UNFIXED". So the guy at best buy said they can replace it with the m5309. I asked if the m5309 has the overheating problem, and they said I most likely just got a lemon. I asked if I could choose a laptop from a different manufacture, they said "NO". I took the m5309 feeling absolutely stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Here I am, walking out of best buy with ANOTHER eMachines. So, I guess I have three months until my m5309 starts overheating again.

Typing in “eMachines overheat” in any search engine will give you hundreds of results. From my research, I have found that the overheating is due to it's poor design and dust build up, all things that are not under my control, all things that should NOT happen.

Hopefully, this will turn into a lawsuit when enough of us report it. These problems should not be happening, and emachines should be giving full refunds. Well, hopefully this thing will never overheat, if it does I will not be contacting emachines, I will be contacting someone that can actually help us get our money back.

M5105...sound problems...luckily no overheating like some of the other laptop owners have mentioned. This machine has been terriffic so far. Reliable, great features, great price. However, the left speaker goes dead when the internal modem is actived. Have to reboot to get speaker to work again. Anybody have any similar experiences?

I had the same problem with my right speaker in my M5310, it would cut in and out and I could get it to work by tapping it.

I'm another sucker that fell for the "great price" and "great specs" on the M5305. I bought a $900 referb from tigerdirect.com with only a 30 day warranty. Unfortunately I never found out about how bad these laptops really are until it was too late to send it back for a refund. At first I thought the problems (spontaneous shut-offs) were caused from all the modding I was doing to the XP operating system. Then I found out that these problems continued on any clean installation I did. Now the hard drive has completely crashed and I haven't owned this stinking laptop 2 months!

The only option that I see is to replace the hard drive and get it to where it will at least boot up to windows, and hock this piece of crap on ebay. I'm not the kind of person that would normally rip someone off, but I can't afford to waste $900 on a piece of shit laptop. Hopefully this emachines nightmare will soon be over with.

I bought my M5310 in Sept 03 from Best Buy. In January I started experiencing the overheat/shutdowns. The problem got progressively worse so I started searching, and found this along with many other blogs about the problem. I called emachines last night prepared to go through some long have you tried this/that talk. I told them it was shutting down so fast that it was unusable and the said they would send out the box. Should be here today. Will Update when it gets back. If yours is overheating/shutting down call emachines.

I cracked my screen so If anyone has a broken emachines notebook they want to sell me please email me at lot21477@hotmail.com

I had the same heat problem after owning the m5310 for about 6 months. Sent the laptop in on Monday and got it back on Wednesday...Less than 48 hours. So it's obvious they know what the problem is and are happy to fix it. Didn't cost me a thing and got 90 day warranty on the work they did. I am happy...unless it happens again....Jim

I had the same heat problem after owning the m5310 for about 6 months. Sent the laptop in on Monday and got it back on Wednesday...Less than 48 hours. So it's obvious they know what the problem is and are happy to fix it. Didn't cost me a thing and got 90 day warranty on the work they did. I am happy...unless it happens again....Jim

I had the same exact problem that all of you were having...as the months went on, it overheated more and more to the point where gaming was close to impossible.

The other night out of sheer frustration I went to Wal-Mart and got a bottle of compressed air and blew it in via the vent [I believe it's important to blow it in at such an angle so you spin the fan to a highspeed both directions to shake off the dust]....and that fixed my problem considerably. Out of curiosity, I opened up my laptop using the instructions stated elsewhere in these comments and my hunch was true...the fan which cools the heat pipe and the vents themselves had become over-run with dust. By using the compressed air at a different angle I was able to completely clean my cooling system and now it purr's like a charm again...I was able to play a multiplayer game that crashed on me after 5 minutes a few days ago for two hours tonight even...

This may not work for everyone, but I'm a Junior Computer Science major at a University and I simply could not give up my laptop for a week to two to have it fixed by emachines...so maybe this is worth a look into if some of you can't spare your laptop being taken away.

I had the same exact problem that all of you were having...as the months went on, it overheated more and more to the point where gaming was close to impossible.

The other night out of sheer frustration I went to Wal-Mart and got a bottle of compressed air and blew it in via the vent [I believe it's important to blow it in at such an angle so you spin the fan to a highspeed both directions to shake off the dust]....and that fixed my problem considerably. Out of curiosity, I opened up my laptop using the instructions stated elsewhere in these comments and my hunch was true...the fan which cools the heat pipe and the vents themselves had become over-run with dust. By using the compressed air at a different angle I was able to completely clean my cooling system and now it purr's like a charm again...I was able to play a multiplayer game that crashed on me after 5 minutes a few days ago for two hours tonight even...

This may not work for everyone, but I'm a Junior Computer Science major at a University and I simply could not give up my laptop for a week to two to have it fixed by emachines...so maybe this is worth a look into if some of you can't spare your laptop being taken away.

I experience the same SHUTDOWN PROBLEM. So I CALLED technical support. Right after I described the situation, the guy said "ITS OVERHEATING, WE WILL SEND YOU A BOX TO SHIP YOUR LAPTOP TO US TO FIX." They shipped the box to me via FedEx STANDARD OVERNIGHT, took only one day. I got it, sent it on MONDAY, another STANDARD OVERNIGHT which they paid for you. And I got my M5310 back on WEDNESDAY. It was FAST! and PROBLEM IS FIXED! My harddrive was not reformatted at all. BEFORE SENDING IN MY LAPTOP, I just backed up some important files, uninstalled some "warez", and removed my account's password.
I was SATISFIED WITH THEIR EXPEDITIOUS SERVICE.
Glad luck to you all, too.

J. Doe

Great machine M5312, performance is excellent, screen is awesome, crisp and sharp. Video would better if it wasn't shared. Will be connecting to my wireless network, should be interesting after hearing the comments. It's onboard wireless capability sounds interesting. Have played a few games with no problems, BF1942 and such. Always had IBM Thinkpad, to proprietary. Love AMD, been really happy with them. No problems with heat that seems to be common.I give it a 4.5 out of 4.

Mike obviously works for emachines. Don't buy this machine or any emachine. It's not worth your trouble no matter what. If someone gave this piece of crap to me as a gift.... I would respectfully decline. It's like an insult. Let me know if anyone is starting a lawsuit against emachines. M5310 shouldn't be overheating like this.

I have a M6805 can anybody tell me how to open it up to clean the fan and the fins.. i tried like the above directions but something is hanging on yet cannot get

Hi there,

I got a M5313 just a few days ago in Canada. I couldn't find this model anywhere in this BBS, no from emachine website. It is the same configuration as M5309 except with embeded 802.11g wireless. It works fine so far include the wireless. I wonder if M5313 is a model only available in Canada. Is it the same internal design as M5309 or M5310, will there be overheating problem a couple of months later? I am still in the 14 days of Futureshop refund period, should I change to a Toshiba A40 (same price as C$1499 but use P4 2.4, no wide screen)? Any suggestions will be appreciated.

i get "wireless wan miniport EEE preventing hibernation" when i try to get my machine into hibernation mode. anyone else has this problem?

NEVER,EVER AGAIN will I waste my money on Emachines.

This overheating problem with the m5310 started 1 month new and is increasingly getting worse.
I'd like to know who are the idiots recommending this POS on sites like CNET.

I'm buying something else, and giving this crap away.

I bought my emachine m5305 last summer at futureshop while on vacation in canada. brought it back to arizona and i use it as my desktop. i have plugged in a full size keyboard and mouse because I don't like touch pads.

i have my emachine plugged in all the time and i rarely use it off the battery. I do have a tip for those of you who complain about overheating...

it DOES overheat, but the problem has not occured for me since i purchased a Targus Coolpad which I leave under my laptop 24/7 to ventilate the bottom. Since I bought this accessory, not once has my Emachine overheated in constant use for months.

the only way i could get wireless to work was to buy a D-link receiver and install it. (I have a wireless network in our home so I have a transmitter and several receivers around the house.) Be aware that when you unplug the D-link wireless receiver, it will require the D-link CD to reinstall it every time. A headache, fer sure, but I must have wireless! So thats my workaround for the wireless issue.

I love the compatibility of this laptop with things like the FujiFilm XD card reader for my camera, and other things I have plugged into it.

I recommend it as a sleek desktop machine, rather than a laptop, due to its cumbersome weight. The awesome sharp screen makes up for its few shortcomings. Its great for watching DVDs!

If you want your emachines laptop to behave and to last a long time, you have to keep it cool. Get a Targus Cool Pad. Yes really!

So what have you guys heard of the new eMachine m6000 series, particularly the m6805 or the m6807.
I think the only difference is that the m6807 has a DVD writer and it’s cheap, about 1600.
I have looked around for reviews and opinions from people and I discovered people are reporting on the m6807 and giving it excellent reviews but the peculiar thing is the m6807 has not been released yet, hmmmmm.
Is this shameless premature promotion or maybe a few psychic interns? Well I know the m6805 is out and on display at best buy.
Is it the "best buy" or a "false profit"?

I sent my m5312 into emachines about a month ago and it was returned fixed. Well, until now... It's starting to overheat and shut-off again. I don't recommend this piece of shit to anyone or any emachines computer for that reason. Who mass produces a laptop without putting it through some stress tests. Not even a stress test, a test running a game that a lot of people use would help and they would see that it shuts down very quickly. I wish there was something I could do but I'm so fed up with all the BS i keep hearing on this site I'm cutting this motherfucker open and fixin it myself. Death to emachines them lying, no-good, rip-off sons of whores. Fuck them. Fuck you fools at emachines if you are reading this. You people suck at life.

E MACHINES SUCKS ASS!!!
don't buy one...if you have i am very sorry for you.

the note books overheat like its noboy's business and the support sucks!

My over heats all the bloody time!
eventually it's going hurt my mother board

i Know the M5312 or 5000 series has problems with over heating but im not getting that series im talking about the new 6000 series were they claim to have resolved this issue. Is the m5312 didn't have the overheating problem it would be a decent set up, am i right? Well lets hope so.

I am the proud owner of a e6508 had it for 3 months now best note book iv ever had flawless performance.. frank.

sorry make it a m6805

Yes, there IS an heating problem, and there is NOTHING that a user can do about it... 3D games and linux make this problem happen faster. This is merely a design problem. I had a M5310 laptop, they exchanged it with a M5312, but now I still have the same problem...

Here's the solution :

Buy one of those ice packs which have jelly inside which does not leak. Dry it with a piece of cloth after freezing, and place it to upper left part of the keyboard, right on the 'emachines' logo. It will let you play 3D for a couple of hours he he... :)

Well, I know what will happen next. They will first destroy whatever I had installed, by using the recovery CD. (It takes days and days for me to set up everything, including linux. I have to recompile the kernel, install numerical libraries, etc... But it takes for the technicians only minutes to overwrite everything with recovery CD) And only after then they are capable of understanding (!) that the heating problem is about the hardware, not the software or settings. Wise guys eh?

And they will send it to the center, leaving me away from my laptop for weeks (this is unbearable for a computer science PhD student like me!!!) And then replace it with a new one. WHICH WILL HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM!!! Infinite cycle, no real solution...

Well, emachines already missed the chance to sell tens of laptops more with my recommendation. Everyone around ask me about what to buy, and guess what I tell them :)

But I appreciate the price/performance ratio of this laptop, and if they can solve (and they have to, otherwise people will look for their rights) this problem, this is really the best deal around.

Regards...

the e-machines M5310 laptop is overheating garbage. i am really frustrated with this piece of crap. I have returned it once and sent it for repairs 3 times and it still just switches itself off in under 10 minutes. if you are considering purchasing this product, please do not. email me or msn me if you'd like to hear the emachines horror stories (cale_rich@hotmail.com) I am really dissatisfyed with emachines customer service as well. it is absolutley horrible. ive spent about $40 in long distance calls from canada to across the US and they are just giving me the run around. trying to hang me out until the warranty expires, i will purchase the 3 year warranty now and start calling them on a bi-daily basis, maybe they will stop b.s-ing me and either actually fix it which they havent yet, or send me a diffrent machine.. maybe a terca. LOL i wish panasonic made laptops. i actually have confidence in that company. emachines = poop. m5310 = poop.
-cale.

^^^ also noting the post above me.. I also have gone the jelly Ice pack under my laptop route for this machine. and a wooden block to make it balance better.

they also take it for weeks on end when i send it away, having it come back still broken and trash and just reformatted. thanx a lot e-mashits. they have not given me another model yet unfortunatley.. the only thing i even like about this laptop now is the widescreen and the blue lights. other than that its nothing.

this company has put me through hell and until im satisfied I am going to do all I can to share my problems and make their rep even more brutal.

and i meant tecra not terca. (a diffrent companys laptop)

i sent in my m5312 emachines over spring break on friday 8:30 am at an authorized FedEx shipping place and got it back on weds are around 2ish.... everything on my harddrive was formatted and the rubber things that hold up on the laptop was all loose.... but other than that... my laptop works perfectly fine... there is still however... the heat issue... it still heats up like a b!tch at a different location so i guess they prob changed the whole interior of the laptop....

for anyone who'z thinkin about getting an Emachine.... spend the extra $400 and get something else cuz the hastle isnt worth it

- J

The machine is overheated. And emachine is not try to fix this problem. I purchased it last May. It works ok until Jan 2004. They do not even admit they have over heating problem.

Do not buy this computer. If you do, you can bargain with me. I think it is ok if you use it for home or light use.

anyone have problems with the screen turning white....while the power, and sound still works..i thought it might be a virus but it actually the screen looks like it been put in water....but i woke up and notice this problem...what should i do? i just bought it and i am sending it to emachine customer repair....

Just called emachines tech support for 5310 overheat issue: Extremely courteous and helpful. Just a few quick questions and *poof* the prepaid box is on it's way.

I'll give you all a follow-up on turnaround times and if they send a 'fixed' unit or a good quality replacement.

^^^^^^^
|Posted by: Jury on April 21, 2004 06:26 PM |

poof.. pre paid box.. phahahhaha first pre paid box they sent me was an envelope going to the opposite side of the wrong country!!! hahaha tomorrow im sending my pos in for round 3 with the technicians.. at least now it has a few more problems to deal with.. for instance... it wont even turn on!!! LOL!! i press the button, the lights go on, no HD spinning.. and the fan goes on and off and on and off. they best just replace the damn thing. also last time they had it in, it came back and the case was all busted up because they tightened the screws wayyyyy too much and broke all the plastic. ...if anyone can find me an emachine corporate email address (ceo or anyone better than a tech support manager) that i can send a formal complain to please let me know. cale_rich@hotmail.com. just put the header "emachine" or something along that line so i dont empty it in my junkmail.

^^^^^^^
|Posted by: Jury on April 21, 2004 06:26 PM |

poof.. pre paid box.. phahahhaha first pre paid box they sent me was an envelope going to the opposite side of the wrong country!!! hahaha tomorrow im sending my pos in for round 3 with the technicians.. at least now it has a few more problems to deal with.. for instance... it wont even turn on!!! LOL!! i press the button, the lights go on, no HD spinning.. and the fan goes on and off and on and off. they best just replace the damn thing. also last time they had it in, it came back and the case was all busted up because they tightened the screws wayyyyy too much and broke all the plastic. ...if anyone can find me an emachine corporate email address (ceo or anyone better than a tech support manager) that i can send a formal complain to please let me know. cale_rich@hotmail.com. just put the header "emachine" or something along that line so i dont empty it in my junkmail.

^^^^^^^
|Posted by: Jury on April 21, 2004 06:26 PM |

poof.. pre paid box.. phahahhaha first pre paid box they sent me was an envelope going to the opposite side of the wrong country!!! hahaha tomorrow im sending my pos in for round 3 with the technicians.. at least now it has a few more problems to deal with.. for instance... it wont even turn on!!! LOL!! i press the button, the lights go on, no HD spinning.. and the fan goes on and off and on and off. they best just replace the damn thing. also last time they had it in, it came back and the case was all busted up because they tightened the screws wayyyyy too much and broke all the plastic. ...if anyone can find me an emachine corporate email address (ceo or anyone better than a tech support manager) that i can send a formal complain to please let me know. cale_rich@hotmail.com. just put the header "emachine" or something along that line so i dont empty it in my junkmail.

M5310 Overheat Followup - - -

Okay, got the RMA box two days after getting the RMA number and sent it to emachines the same day, it was a Friday so they didn't get it until the following Monday morning.

I waited until Wednesday and didn't see any progress on the RMA status page on emachines website so I called. They said the repair was 'on hold' because it was missing the memory module in the expansion port.

These things come configure with 256MB onboard and 256MB in the expansion slot. I replaced the 256MB stick in the expansion slot with a 512MB to max out the memory. I removed my memory before shipping it out, but forgot to replace the original memory. This caused me to waste 3 days 'On Hold'.

They never called to inform me that my repair was 'on hold', and said they were waiting for me to call. Thanks alot. Damn good thing I didn't wait a week to check.

I had to acknowledge that I knew the memory was missing, then they had to get Corporate approval to proceed with the repair. This took an additional 24 hours.

My laptop was returned on the following Tuesday, 11 days after I sent it in.

The laptop had been cleaned nicely and seems to work well. They didn't 'restore' my hard drive so my OS wasn't screwed up. Everything still looks like brand new.

I placed a followup call to ask what repairs had actually been done, and they said the CPU fan was dead so they replaced it. If that's all they did, then I'm going to drive this thing like hell to make sure it isn't going to crap out again.

I'll report back to let you know how it's going.

Just got off the phone with tech myself. I had the intergrated nic replace a month after i bought it. This is the second RMA on a M5310. So if I am reading the posts correctly, even if they replace the heatsink people are still having the over heat issue? I'm hoping it will all work out but either way this is my first and last emachine.

My M5312 was overheating and shutting off with some games. I called tech support and they told me the pc would shut off to protect the electronics. Following an earlier comment, I blasted the fan vent opening (with the computer off) with a can of compressed air (picked up at the local Target). There was quite a bit of dust that blew out of the machine (more than I had expected). So far, games that had been causing a shut off have been running fine (so far). When I play the games now, the area under the emachines logo (in upper left corner) just gets warm, which is a far cry from the very hot to touch that I had experienced earlier. Sending your machine in for repair might be the best option, but cleaning with compressed air does appear to work.

I purchased my m5305 last June (note that I said June for later purposes), Overheating all the time, Ive had both Linux and FreeBSD running on this laptop, but only when I set the latency to the point where we running at about 1.5 :(, contacted tech support blah blah blah, same as all the other horror stories, tech support told me it was a bad cpu fan, and they replaced the fan. But they did not replace anthing else. Today, my most darkest hour, it died, i can only get the blue power light on, nothing else will kick on, although i think i hear the hard drive spinning, I called tech support today, and they were very rude, they are under the impression that my warranty ran out at the beginning of the month, to what will be their dismay, I have proof from best buy that I still have 36 days left of my warranty. People there has to be a way to raise a lawsuit of some type, this is clearly not just a couple lemons, this is a lack of professionalism and attention to detail on eMachines part, and they need to compensate those of us who have lost time, and data with this problem. We should not have to mod our cases or manually lower cpu speeds by setting pci bit values.

I sent it in for repairs due to the overheating problem a few months back. It came back and worked well for a while but has recently began overheating again.I'm sending it in again for repair. E-machines has told me that they will only replace the unit if it has been sent back three times for the same problem. I am so fed-up with this problem. If anyone is reading this forum before purchasing an e-machines notebook take my advice and DONT buy their product. One of the most frustrating parts is e-machines not admitting that this problem is common to their machine. I really feel like they are stringing me along until my warranty expires. If anyone wishes to speak further on this matter feel free to e-mail me. Just remove the nospam from my addy. Perhaps a class action lawsuit would be a possibility.

Just so you all know, I also have a M5305 and the overheating issue. It's horrible. Im from Puerto Rico and each time I receive something electronic I have to pay some local tax. This sucks. Oh and my processor makes this weird insect-like sound. Yes, Emachines suck.

I have the same exact problem. I have been searching the net for emachines laptop a shuting down and I have found alot of complaints. I am half tempted to try to explore a class action law suite on this one, I am realy not happy.

i am posting this as a solution to all of your overheating problems, the problem is because of dust inthe fan and heatsink, to fix remove the button plate from the top of your laptop by prying it up with a flathead screwdriver, or letter opener, and the removing the 3 screws that hold the keyboard in place, take compressed air, and clean all dust, and debree away from the fan and heatsink, and put back together, i did this with me 5312 and it's been fine, ever since, you may have to do this again in the future, but it's very simple, and it saves the trouble of sending it out for a long period of time

Have had M5310 for almost 1 year. Runs steady with no less than 70% processor load for 23 hours every day 7 days a week. I've been running it this hard for the last three months straight and not one issue with overheating. I think maybe people should just dust their desks once and a while. I just took mine apart this morning for a routine cleaning (1st time since I bought it) and no more than 1/4 mm of dust on fan, and none anywhere else in the cooling system. Did have problems with POS wireless but a driver update fixed that. Other than that it's been great for an economy laptop.

I have had the 5312 since Jan 04, I have just started having the overheat/shutdown problem also. Mine developed when I chg'd my OS from XP-Home to XP-Pro. Will taking the computer apart to blow out the fan void the warranty, in other words are there any seals that get broken in the process that would indicate that the computer had been opened, thus voiding a 3yr warranty.Thanks

I have the M5310 with the same problems. Overheated a lot after about two months, but I had to deal with it for almost 6 more.....I needed the laptop for school. When I sent it back I got it back on the third day, worked like a charm again. The fan was putting out air like it was supposed to and the CPU seemed to have been replaced. After about two months it started overheating again. I just got off the phone with them just a minute ago, sending it again. Unfortunately, my warranty is up in about two weeks, so no more after this. Now I'll have to deal with Best Buy which, according to their tech support, can take 2-4 weeks per fixing. The techie at EMachines said he has been working there for a while and that he hadn't heard of this problem before. It was kinda weird, he had taken care of the RMA stuff and he was about to go when I stopped him and asked him if EMachines had planned anything better than this temporary fix. Right after that someone either hung up a phone or picked up, and he then proceeded to tell me this wasn't a common problem. Oh well......I guess we are all hoping something legal gets started. Good luck with everyone else's

I too have that gosh darn overheating problem. Also to notice now that my fan gets extremely loud and starts buzzing. AND, to add one more problem..my 56k modem doesn't work anymore. It will connect yet goes no where!! My laptop is still under warranty but I'm EXTREMELY hesitate about what to do..I mean I know they are gonna be extremely frustrated with me saying oh yeah I need the fan replaced, my modem replaced and did i mention it overheats too? Ugh. HELP.

I have sent my 5310 in once before for overheating and I am currently waiting for my second box to arrive. I have called in three times waiting for the stupid box to get here...the first time they said it got lost in the fedex warehouse(whatever), and I called back again and they said they must be back ordered. Personally, I feel like they are just trying to blow me off because my warranty is up in a few days. I have been reassured that because I phoned in before my warranty expired, it will still be covered. I am so pissed off write now. Please let me know if anyone else is filing a lawsuit.

I was also having problems with overheating, the solution I found cost me $20, but I also didn't have to deal with losing the use of my computer for weeks or worry about my hard drive being re-formatted. I bought an antec cooler at staples, it basically a fan that plugs into a usb port (with an pass-thru adapter, or whatever you want to call it, so you can piggy-back another usb device onto it) and it rests underneath my emachines. It obviously makes a lot more noise now, but I've left it running converting different video files for hours on end without any shutdowns, where before it would invariably overheat and shutdown just minutes from completing an 8hour project. YMMG, but it's been a lifesaver for me.

Like the machine. The pin in the power port in the back broke. Laptop makers need to improve this.

Some of you guys have me scared now. Just bought one at Best Buy (they had a $50 rebate, can't beat that) and it has worked pretty good so far. If I get an overheating problem, I will demand a refund. If it is a manufacturing problem (which it seems like), they will refund my money. I've had problems with electronics and manufactures defects costing me repair money (hello IPOD hard drive). I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope I have some more luck than some of you.

Bought my 5310 almost a year ago... lucky for me that for the first time I purchased the service contract. The first one was pretty much perfect, till the screen broke. (Yes, I dropped it... lied to best buys and got a new one.) The second one was an upgrade as best buys didn't sell mine anymore, and had a bigger hard drive and a bad pixel. I kept it anyway, until it started overheating. This time they didn't have the same model, but insisted I pay for the upgrade ($100)... I fought and only paid $50 and found out after I paid that I would get a $100 rebate! Now I have a 5350 with a 333 fsb and am really enjoying the added speed.
At this point, I have installed SuSE 9.1 and am having problems getting sound. Anyone know where I can get a linux sound driver?

Way back in this thread a few people asked if anyone had sent the 5310 laptop back to eMachines for correction of the overheat problem. They had it back to me in a few days, but after a short while, the problem returned. I'm about to take further action and will post the result, if any.

Well I actually own an M5105...but like most of you I also had this problem. I did send out for a box to give it back to them to fix however, it's Sunday so it will not arrive today. One thing you can try though that for some reason worked for me. Try using a keyboard cleaner to dust out the air ducts for the fans on the bottom on back. With mine, so much dust came out that my eyes watered. My LCD was covered in it. Since then I left a bunch of programs running overnight and the computer was still on, and not even hot if not cold. I'm still debating whether or not to send it in, but hey, any suggestions would be helpful.

I have a M3509 and it worked great for nearly a year - then started having trouble aking up from hibernation or standby, and then started the overheating, shut down routine.

I used the vacuum cleaner (very carefully) on the outside of the fan duct, and it seems to have helped the heat problem, but I don't doubt that I will have to send it off to emachines at some time in the future. I think the warranty is only one year? I have to look it up - so I don't know if it has expired or not.

If I had read this site first, I probably would not have bought an emachine - even though I really liked it until this problem started happening....

Emachine should replace all the M53xx series. My notebook has gone through 5 RMA numbers! I know the FedEx guy really well. He always smiles when dropping off the package and says, "oh no, not again". I respond by saying, yup more job security for you. I'm going to go buy some stock in FedEx if this continues.

I purchased this laptop when it first was introduced in september 2003, The thing worked great until January 2004. The overheating problem was so ridiculous, I lost many Microsoft word papers and photoshop designs. The emachine customer service was horrible, nto anything against foreigners but, can I get a person that understands how to communicate in English. The computer was sent out to be fixed. The repair worked for a month, just long enough to go over my year warrenty. The problem has gotten so bad I am affraid to use the computer anymore. I have experimented with fans which work temporarely but thats all.
I recently started work for Best Buy and let me tell you the employs especially the computer department at my store do their very best to let the customer know the disadvantages (shitty production value) and advantages (cheap) of owning an emachine. I blame emachine for making such a poor quality product. I would be very interested supporting a lawsuit against emachine. Theyn have stollen our money, our trust, and our time. This product should be recalled and we should be reimbursed at emachines expense. Please contact me with any information regarding legal action against emachine.

Someone with any legal experience please lets get this class action lawsuit on its way. I returned the laptop to fix the overheating problem, the repair worked for only a month, just long enough for my warrenty to expire. The customer service people are very rude. I work at best buy and have to say that the computer salesmen are not to blame for this problem. They explain to each and every customer the benefits of an emachine(being cheap) and the disadvantages (shitty quality.) We do not work on commision and that kid trying to sell you a more expensive sony viao or toshiba is not trying to pull one over on you and rip you off, we are trying to make the customer happy, and not having to go through this bullshit. Emachine has stolen from us our time, our trust, and our money. How can any business get away with such behavior. They should be responsible for fully compensating the consumers, a lemon law in technology. This is BS

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