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bazg
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 82
Loc: Northampton
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Ok, i have a toshiba portege m200 that does not have an internal cd drive. i am at the stage now where i think the system is due a complete reformat and reinstall of windows, the only trouble is toshiba only bundle a product recovery cd, this may possibly do the job but as i have no internal cd drive i have connected a usb cd drive and attempted to boot from that into the setup or whatever this product recovery cd has. I have changed the boot priority to cd and checked that usb boot option (or whatever it was called) was enabled in the bios. It does not boot from the cd, it just ignores it and boots from the hdd. i phoned toshiba tech support who reckon that the only way i will get it to boot from a usb drive is if the drive is made by toshiba (kinda convenient) because the system will reckognise the chipset in the toshiba drive. ok so maybe this is true but then that leaves me really out of luck and never able to reformat and reinstall windows? surely not?
pleez help 
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Jonny555
Reg'd: Fri
Posts: 5328
Loc: Cheshire, England
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You can pick up a new CD drive for as little as £15 and it only takes a few minutes to install it.
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bazg
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 82
Loc: Northampton
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sorry johnny, dont want to sound ungrateful but how will that solve my problem? this laptop has no internal cd drive and no space for one
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Jonny555
Reg'd: Fri
Posts: 5328
Loc: Cheshire, England
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Quote:
sorry johnny, dont want to sound ungrateful but how will that solve my problem? this laptop has no internal cd drive and no space for one
You only mentioned you didn't have one, not that there isn't even room for one.
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Jonny555
Reg'd: Fri
Posts: 5328
Loc: Cheshire, England
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From what I can find by searching around you can try to boot from the CD drive by holding down F12 as you switch on.
If that fails I don't know. From what I can see it appears that the machine will only recognise a Toshiba drive.
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bazg
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 82
Loc: Northampton
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sorry mate, didnt realise i hadnt cleared that up
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bazg
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 82
Loc: Northampton
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ok will try the F12 thing, see if that works. Damn it i can see that this is gonna have to be a toshiba drive thing which really really sucks and kinda makes me never want to buy toshiba again 
and the cheapest toshiba usb cd drive i can find is over 100 notes
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The_DADDY
regular
Reg'd: Mon
Posts: 1141
Loc: Who gives a damn!
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Quote:
and the cheapest toshiba usb cd drive i can find is over 100 notes
Thats an awful lot in this day and age.
The_DADDY
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Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but its all ive got!
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RichieP
regular
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 4725
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I'm susrprised if that's really true,as booting from a USB device shouldn't matter what it is, even an external hard drive would work.
In your BIOS boot order, do you have the option to change to boot from a USB device? If so, change it to that and try rebooting.
If that doesn't work, does the computer read any disks you put into the external CD drive?
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 OK OK I can't go any faster! aaaaaaaaaaaagh!
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bazg
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 82
Loc: Northampton
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i have already enable the usb boot options and changed the order priority to CD first and it doesnt work. I have tried this with 2 different USB cd drives and they both work fine in windows itself but cannot boot from them
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Jonny555
Reg'd: Fri
Posts: 5328
Loc: Cheshire, England
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Apparently the computer looks for the signature of the chipset of Toshiba drives.
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RichieP
regular
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 4725
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2 things.
1. Change it to boot from USB device, not CD. You don't have a CD drive remember.
2. If it won't boot still, try running direct from the disk within Windows. Some recovery CDs restore the PC by running them, not booting from them.
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OK OK I can't go any faster! aaaaaaaaaaaagh!
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bazg
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 82
Loc: Northampton
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there is no usb option in the boot priority only cd, the "usb bootable" option is on another page in the bios, i have already tried booting from within windows but it is not playable that way
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RichieP
regular
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 4725
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Hmm. Looking into this further, looks like you were given correct information (how refreshing for a helpline!!) and you can't boot from anything but Toshiba drives. What a rip off.
Do you have a floppy drive? Try creating the 6 startup disks for XP from here and loading from the CD then.
If you haven't got a floppy either, you're pretty stuck.
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OK OK I can't go any faster! aaaaaaaaaaaagh!
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bazg
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 82
Loc: Northampton
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havent got 1 at the moment but probably gonna buy a usb flopy drive if that is my only option, will wait a while and see what you can dig up
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bazg
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 82
Loc: Northampton
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ok, i have ordered a USB floppy drive and i checked out those links for the startup discs, the only trouble is they are for win xp and i have xp tablet edition on this stupid machine. also if there are those similar files available for tablet edition, will that actually provide a completely clean install or is there more i need to do?
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RichieP
regular
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 4725
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Hmmm. Not really sure I'm afraid. Have to give it a try.
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OK OK I can't go any faster! aaaaaaaaaaaagh!
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bazg
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 82
Loc: Northampton
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anybody tried this? also anybody know where i can the tablet version of these discs?
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bazg
regular
Reg'd: Sun
Posts: 82
Loc: Northampton
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ok, i managed to eventually reformat this laptop but it was only because my mate also had a toshiba laptop but this one had an internal cd drive.
i swapped the hdd's over so my hdd was in his laptop with an internal cd drive, reformatted, reinstalled windows and then swapped back, voila!
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RichieP
regular
Reg'd: Thu
Posts: 4725
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Well done for getting it sorted, and lucky you for having access to the same laptop.
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OK OK I can't go any faster! aaaaaaaaaaaagh!
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