My friends emachines computer went into the shop and had a mobo replaced.
When he brought it home everything on his computer screen looked small and he got an error message saying out of range.
His background screen was showing but he could not do anything, even ctrl, alt, delete did not work. Any ideas? Is this a monitor problem? Something to do obviouly with the new mobo? I asked (over the phone) for the guy to start up in safe mode but he wasn't successful. I got to go over there tonight and check it out but would like some suggestion at what to do.

When the monitor says "out of range" in means that the refresh rate set by the video card driver exceeds the maximum refresh rate of the monitor.

For example, if the monitor supports 1280x1024 at 75Hz, and you feed it 1280x1024 AT 85 Hz, you get the message. Setting a resolution exceeding the monitor's spec will give the same message too.

What you need to do is reboot and press F8 asap. A menu will appear then select boot into safe mode with VGA. Once in safe mode, change the desktop resolution to something acceptable by the monitor (i.e. 1024x768x75Hz). Reboot.