System Recovery Help

Hi there,

I consider myself fairly good with computers, I enjoy playing around with them etc. but I've gotten myself into some trouble.

A friend bought a Toshiba Sat. M300 which came with Vista installed. He wanted XP and asked me to put it on. I've installed it before on other desktops without issues, simply reformat and install. It installed fine but I had some issues with getting the Toshiba drivers, some simply did not want to install.

Regardless, my friend just wants his computer back to factory settings. He has lost his Recovery DVDs but I thought holding F8 to access Adv Booting and using the hidden partition would do the trick. However it does not give the Repair Option it formerly did with Vista.

So few questions about solving this one.

1. Did my reformat and installation of XP delete the hidden partition included on most Toshiba laptops or has XP simply made it inaccessible?
2. Will installing the 'anytime upgrade' vista DVDs that came with my Toshiba a100 laptop with his vista key allow me to access the hidden partition and repair it through the adv booting (f8)?
3. Will my a100 recovery DVDs work on his m300?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

I don't know the answers to any of your questions (well, my answer to question 3 is "I doubt it"), but here's an idea...

You should be able to use your Anytime Upgrade disc to reinstall Vista for your friend. Select the edition that came with his computer, and use his key too. Once it's installed you can download the drivers from Toshiba.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure now if Anytime Upgrade might require Vista to be installed already or not. If so then I guess that presents sort of a chicken-and-egg problem....

 

Answer to number one is: either could be correct. How did you reformat? Did you let Windows do it, or did you do a custom install? If you just let Windows do whatever it wanted to do, then your recovery partition is gone, as it wants the entire disk by default.

Regardless, XP most likely rewrote the factory MBR, which is what contains the 'magic' that lets the factory restores work. Never figured out how to restore the function, as I deleted mine in a frustrated attempt to restore any functional OS on my One. Learned that the hard way, myself...

 

Well I've given him the 'good' news from you elites. He thinks he can find his Recov DVDs when he returns home at the end of the semester. Despite my total formatting of his system, they should still bring us back to Vista, right?

 

I believe so....heh, wish him good luck.

 

Yup.

Until then you could consider installing a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu.

 

I've been experimenting on an old desktop that is being used primarily by computer-illiterate parents. Reformatting and reinstalling XP every 4 months due to massive infections was getting annoying. I started with Ubuntu, but despite 512mb Ram on a decent P4 it was fairly sluggish compared to a fresh (though not long-lasting) XP install.

I then gave Xubuntu a go, upgrading after the install. I had nothing but issues with this, perhaps a bad install, but I was getting fed up with little annoyances.

I was then pointed to LinuxMint. Gave the Standard edition a whirl on my laptop and enjoyed having all the basics preinstalled and the simple one-click installs for frostwire and emesene etc. Besides no trouble getting java etc, It Just looked sexy. Anyway, I've installed the Xfce CE on that old desktop and it's working great, a beautiful machine that downloads torrents 24/7 while meeting the email and browsing needs for the parents.

I doubt my friend will adapt, I'm sure he has some stuff he can't bare to change. I'm sure he'll live another month without his gfx card drivers (which strangely wont install). Thanks again fellas.