Reformating a A100

Hi,

I want to reformat my girlfriend's laptop. It's a A100. Do you know any guide at NBR or everywhere else to do it clean ??

THX

 

What OS do you want to install?
Do you have a recovery disk or a Windows CD?
When you say "do it clean" do you mean a clean install of Windows or do you mean taking extra methods to make old data unrecoverable?

 

I want to install XP Home and I think I'm gonna use a genuine Windows XP CD, not the recovery

 

Ok, I saw you post in the Windows thread regarding whether reformatting a laptop is different that a desktop. As the others told you, it is exactly the same.

However, if your laptop has a SATA drive (I don't know if the A100 does) & you haven't used SATA before, then you may be in for a surprise with the Windows installation. Long story short: Windows XP doesn't have the necessary componets to detect a SATA drive natively. So you must integrate that support. However, the Windows installation process will not be able to format the drive without this driver, SO, you don't need to worry about it unless you find that the hard drive isn't detected during format & installation.

If the above mentioned SATA stuff doesn't apply to you, then it is as easy as popping the Windows CD into you laptop and booting from it. The Windows install will do a decent enought reformat.

 

I've got an A100 and it indeed does use SATA drives. I installed from a Windows XP SP2 CD with no issue at all. If you have an older version of Windows XP, you might have to slipstream one to make it work.

 

XP with SP2 needs to use a SATA controller too. It doesn't have it built into the Windows Installation. No version of XP does.

If you achieved an XP install without manually inserting the SATA controller driver, then your BIOS was set to ATA compatibility mode. That is not good because it doesn't utilize the full power of your hard drive.

 

So how did you do the install? or had you installed slipstream drivers earlier?

 

Well then, doesn't make it easier to install it first in ATA compatibility mode first, install the SATA drivers later and set it back to SATA mode?

I didn't need to do anything special. Just booted it up from the Windows CD and installed it like any other installation.

 

It doesn't really work that way. You can change it back to SATA in the BIOS, but Windows would still be using the non-SATA controller which was installed during the setup (which won't fully utilize your hard drives ability). The only way to get the best setup with an XP SATA setup is to slipstream.

BTW, you'll have many other benefits of slipstreaming as well. While slipstreaming the SATA controller you can slipstream SP3, WMP11, IE7, any other hotfix, and driver you man need and such.

It is very easy to slipstream just the SATA controller and will likely only take you 10 minutes.

Yes then you defenately had the BIOS set to ATA. You will get better performance when you install it while in SATA mode.

If it had been in SATA, then with any version of XP you would be told that Windows cannot find a hard disk until you slipstream the SATA controller driver.

 

I just poked around my A100-036's BIOS and found no ATA option or anything that would indicate there would be a way to set SATA/ATA modes.

I just used the drivers I found on the Toshiba website and got this:

 

That picture looks like Vista. Which would explain it. Vista does have the SATA drivers, XP doesn't.

Or are you using a theme/3rd party software to change your toolbar display?

I think it's Vista...

Also, if you are in fact using XP, is it from the manufacturer for straight up from Windows. Because I use XP SP2 and it doesn't have SATA drivers. As well as everyone else who posts here. Hence all these threads about SATA controller drivers.

Are you sure you are using XP?

 

Well, I'm using XP SP2 with Longhorn Inspirat to give it the Vista look.

Didn't have to slipstream any SATA drivers.



Here's an example of Longhorn Inspirat:

 

Well... We could be going at this forever but it seems we aren't getting anywhere

XP doesn't include the SATA driver in any service pack... That is a fact. So how you installed it, while in SATA mode, without the SATA controller is a mystery to me... Unless... Was the XP SP2 CD you used a recovery disc that came with your computer or a standard XP XP2 disc straight from Microsoft?

On a separate note, I have been working on making my XP machine more like Vista in some aspects and MAC in others. That example you gave in the picture looks pretty cool. Currently I am using "Vista Transformation Pack". It didn't give it quite the same degree of awesomeness yours has. In your opinion, how is that software? Does it suck up a lot of processing power or RAM?

 

Let's chock it up as just plain weird or I'm just lucky.

It was a standard XP SP1 disc that I had and I slipstreamed SP2. My Toshiba A100-036 came with 2 Vista recovery DVDs. Nuked Vista but kept the recovery partition and installed XP SP2 along with the drivers I found on Toshiba's website (can't remember if it was the US or Canadian site).

I tried the "Vista Transformation Pack" and it suck up so much power, I uninstalled it the next day.

This Longhorn Inspirat runs just a quick as regular XP but the whole theme is a little bright and takes a little to get use to. Also, I seem to only have the fonts Verdena and Times New Roman to choose from as my main Windows font. I've been too lazy/busy to do more tweaking.

The dock works nice but a little strange. Icons would disappear but reappear after click it sometimes. Also, when you highlight items on the dock, the CPU process goes up quite a bit. A single core will go up to 100% while a dual core will go up to 50% on each core.