M45-S351 No DVD Drive

I just got one of these on Sunday and really like it. Unfortunately, I just installed Retrospect 6.5 and it apparently destroyed the DVD drive driver; i.e. my machine no longer recognizes the DVD drive. It is not in hardware device manager so it's as if it doesn't exist.

Since it doesn't exist I can't use the Restore CD to install the drivers, and I also can't find these drivers on the Toshiba support site. A call to Toshiba support elicited the "it's a firmware problem, send it in" response. Since I bought it from CompUSA which now has a 21 day no-restocking-fee return policy I can return it but would LIKE to correct this so I can continue trying the machine out.

Is there a hidden partition somewhere on this thing that might have the drivers? Is there a driver on the Toshiba site (the only one I found was the DVDRam driver, which is already installed and doesn't do anything anyway)? I also have an external Firewire CD Drive-could that work or does the machine need to actually boot from the drive in order to use the Restore CD?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

=NLK=

 

Hi Nlk,

You can restore the M45 by insert the system restore disc that come with it and shut down the notebook, turn the power back on and hit F12 as soon as possible you will see the boot selection screen with little icon on the bottom select boot form the cd (this is boot from the bios not Windows) and follow the instruction to restore to factory default.

Regards, Rsx.

 

Hi rsx:

Well, don't know exactly what I did but hitting F12 with the DVD in the drive seemed to wake the drive up. I didn't get anything the first time but the second time it booted straight to Windows and the Removable Storage drive icon appeared in My Computer; i.e. I'm back in business. I guess the F12, as you described, pulled something from the BIOS.

In any case, Retrospect is one of the suc*iest programs I've run across, but at least I can now use my drive and continue the test. Why Toshiba "support" couldn't tell me this is, I guess sadly, not surprising. I have yet to hear of Tech Support which is competent a majority of the time.

Thanks very much, rsx, for taking the time to post the solution to my problem.

=NLK=