My M55-S325 does not accept my recovery disk!

Hi,

First I must say I don't know if i've put this in the right place. So if I should move it to another room, please let me know.
I have got an M55-S325 Toshiba. Its CRT output port broke after a while and I sent it back to my vendor to have it fixed. They claim to have changed the Main Board of my laptop, which seems to be true.

I got my laptop back and decided to recover its OS and etc. But surprisingly when I put the recovery disk into the drive, a message popped up saying that the recovery disk is for a M50 or M55 machine and your machine is none!!!!

I spoke to my vendor and he couldn’t help me. Because we live in Iran and they are not official agents of Toshiba they could not do much about it, though they promised to try and solve this for me. But 2 weeks have passed and they have not been able to do anything. I also called Toshiba USA, and they said because my international guarantee has expired they could not do anything for me.

I understand that their should be a BIOS DMI utility patch which would write the information about the machine model and etc. to BIOS and when the recovery would read the data from a location in BIOS which now nothing is written in it.

Now could anyone tell me how I could fix this. A friend of mine has a machine just like me. Is that possible that somehow I would copy the contents of his BIOS on mine? Or anything else?

Plase help.

 

Eqbal,

You may have already thought of this, or tried it, but your situation made me think of simply trying to get the latest BIOS for your computer, and try flashing it to system again. Perhaps that will update whatever system string the recovery CD is looking for. I went to the Toshibadirect support part of the website and selected the Satellite M55-S325 and then selected downloads and filtered for BIOS, and several different versions of BIOS were available. You can download them by looking up your laptop model at the Toshiba support website at;

http://support.toshiba.com/

The other thing I thought of isn't really a solution, but it could get you back up and running again. If your friend's machine is the same model, simply switch your laptop's hard drive with his, and then do the recovery CD onto your hard drive in his laptop. Then once it's finished, switch it back to your laptop.

Lastly you may want to re-ask your question on the Toshiba Computer Systems Support Forum for Europe, Middle East and Africa regions at;

http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/

I'm kind of jealous that Toshiba provides such a resource for EMEA, and not the US, but you can take advantage of the forums there to see if they have a different answer for your issue.

Good Luck..

 

Jas,

Tnx.

The first solution, already done. No good came out of it.

The second one, already done too, and my computer is running. Tnx. The problem is that I have decided to sell my machine and I could not sell it like this! I could not tell the buyer, ok every time you decide to recover your computer come to me and if my friend wouldn't have sold out his, we shall somehow recover it for you.

Thank you for taking your time and giving the above advice.

rgds,
eqbal

 

Eqbal,

Ok. I had to laugh at your comment because I understand exactly what you are saying. It would not be practical to offer that kind of recovery service no matter how nice a person buys your computer. (Well maybe if it's a family member...)

BTW, I should have searched a bit further to discover the Toshiba download DMI patch utility. It does exist and it is available at the Toshiba support website at;

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...ineID=ccciaddiheiemddcgfkceghdgngdgmm.0&ct=DL

If that link doesn't work, go to the support link I posted previously and go to the webpage where you select your model. Instead of selecting your model click on the link on the lower left part of the webpage where it says "For All Models..." and select All Downloads. Then when you get to the webpage, apply the filter for DMI, and you can see all of the DMI patch utilities there.

The only snag may be that the patch listed does not show specifically the M55-S325 as being supported, but the one listed above, which is the same as the first one that will show in the all view when you filter for DMI, does show a number of M55s as being supported, including an S326. It may be worth it to try the patch and see if it works. Especially since all you have to do is apply the patch, and then reboot with the Recover CD and see if it gets past the point where you are at. You don't actually have to restore at that point..

Good Luck..

Jason

 

Salam,
I live in iran too,
There is no copyright in here!
So get a windows xp , download drivers
NEVER EVER TAMPER WITH BIOS especially toshiba which lacks some very important degrees in technology,
I promise you the best thing to do is to install a fresh windows xp and start getting drivers from the internet.
Try to identify your bios type it should help you findout about your motherboard type,
Knowing the lot in here I think you HAVE BEEN CHEATED by the so called support guys.

 

Jason,

Tnx.

If i could back up my bios, i shall try your suggestion for sure. If it works, I'd chase you down and hug you. *don't worry, i'm not gay. we just do that in Iran.

rgds,
eqbal

Mujtaba,
Salaam,

Well, yeh maybe. It's Naghsh co. You sure do know them. Still, I was speaking with the technician today and he said, send it to me and i shall fix it.

Besides, i want to be able to use the advantages of my original windows. So does any other person which buys it. For heaven's sake, I've paid for that stuff, if you know what i mean.

By the way, i didn't like your comment "Toshiba lacks some very important degrees in technology" at all. It hurt my feelings.

Eqbal

 

No worrys about misunderstandings. If it works, and we met, I would hug you back.. (I always hug my brother and my good friends too..)

I would think that as long as you have the latest BIOS on CD, that would serve as an appropriate backup. And remember, if this works, you had the solution figured out from the very beginning. You just needed to find the correct patch.

Good Luck,

Jason

 

Deae Jason,

It didn't work :-(((( It seems that Toshiba has developed this patch for all the models they ever made, other than mine!

Anyway, I was so frustrated that I started messing with all the utilities bundled with the recovery DVD (actually i doubleclicked anything which seemed executable or a batch file) and bingo! I found it! At lease I think so: there is this utility on the receovery DVD called "chgdmi.exe", when you run it, it asks you for a new name for your machine. Not so fast though, I tried every combination of names with it: M55; M55-S325: Satellite M55 and etc. As soon as you run it, a blue screen with some stuff on it pops up (like the screens which apear when you have a fatal hardware error) and it restarts the computer so fast, tht i could not read the contents of this screen. And still the recovery disk does not work.

Now, any suggestions?

Rgds,
eqbal

 

Eqbal,

This definitely appears to be the correct way to do this. Apparently this problem with the machine not having the correct DMI information, happens quite a bit in the Toshiba world, usually after a motherboard replacement. Anyway the chgdmi.exe program is the one that should correct this. You only need to run it to correctly set your DMI information on the laptop CMOS. You should be aware that it needs a machine name typed in like, Satellite M55, exactly like that. (Capitalized S and M only)

Now it sounds to me that you have done exactly that, and you are having this weird reboot with a blue screen. It sounds to me that you may have a bad CMOS chip on the system board. Is it possible to have your service company try and replace either the CMOS, or the entire system board again? If not the next suggestion I got from Googling around will probably not be satisfactory, but it will allow you to provide a recovery DVD that will work with the laptop;

from the following thread;

http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=58863

Now in your case this is a bit more difficult in that you are hacking a recovery DVD. So you will need a fair amount of free disk space to copy the contents of the DVD, and then a DVD burner to burn the hacked DVD back to a blank. But then you will defeat this silly machine check for the recovery process.

Anyway my friend. Sorry I couldn't have provided you any more information than you already have but it really sounds to me like the CMOS chip on the motherboard is bad. This is why it seems to me that instead of the machine information being wrong, it simply cannot be read, and when you try to change it with the chgdmi utility, the comptur reboots. It shouldn't do that. (which I am sure you already know....)

Good Luck..

 

Dear Jason,

You have put a lot of time on my problem, i really appreciate it. I shall try to see if the above suggestion about about recover.bat works or not. If it does better, if it doesn't i shall send back the machine and ask them to replace it for me.

warm regards,
eqbal

 

Eqbal,
I told you...I'm really surprised that your notebook actually boots up...
As far a I found out from your posts you still have a wrong bios (your former notebook's bios) installed on it...
If i am right in guessing it the fact that you have a wrong motherboard on your PC is an enough reason to bring the building down on Naghsh's head (In Farsi : Sakhtemooneshoon ra ro sareshoon kharab konid )...As long as your machine is under their warranty they are responsible to bring it to working condition even if smoke is coming out of your notebook...
Bring up the system setup (see your notebook manual)-Skip the booting picture (if it shows some (it does on my Asus) ) (again see your manual (for me TAB does it))
Although I think your misplaced bios data should trick you...
And it is the option that they have given you a defective motherboard from the moment of repair...
In the worst case FORCE them to read your notebook's motherboard's model and then post the results right here...(I at least check here once per day from now on)
AND do not abandon a post just because you didn't get an answer quickly Click HERE for more information...
Cheers.