Toshiba A55 thinks it's a dell and won't recover windows

yeah, title says it all.

the hard drive I'm using in my old Toshiba A55 is from a Dell inspiron 1150 that died.

I'm trying to use the recovery cd that came with the computer because I have ubuntu installed right now and well, I'm just a windows person, and I can't change that.

however when I put the recovery cd into the computer it says in very weird text "wrong machine" and from there it just runs DOS

any ideas what I could do to make the computer remember that it is a toshiba?

thanks,
-Tyler

 

So, the recovery CD is for which computer ? The Toshiba or the Dell ?

 

Most recovery CD's look to the BIOS to figure out what type of machine. So this sounds a bit odd.

Gary

 

the recovery cd is made for the toshiba.

I don't know why it says wrong machine,
-Tyler

 

Toshiba recovery cds require some information on the drive beforfe the install. It involves a tool called the dmicfg.exe file, which is loaded from the DOS prompt you are referring to.

Look here for some clues on how to start. I've never done it, so I cannot provide a walkthrough

http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/downloads/dmi_instructions.pdf

 

...uh ...can I do that through my current linux install???

or would it be worth it to write a different windows xp disc and call it good?

thanks,
-Tyler

 

well i guess when u installed ubntu u might have formatted the hard disk and might have lost the recivery partition which has the neccessary info. which recovery cd uses to boot and confirm the status of ur machine.this most likely is the reason the recovery cd is not working.i can not provide u a solution to this
but i suggest u get urself a windows os cd arranged and then activate it with the help of product no. written on the back of ur notebook.

 

uh there never was a recovery partition on the laptop in the first place.

also this hdd is from a dell,
-Tyler

 

I doubt it...you have a recovery cd, not a windows installation cd. While you can make a dual boot with a windows installation cd, a recovery cd is often (not always) a disk image that needs to rewrite the disk at a lower level (bit by bit), rather than installing to a partition or file system

Without seeing the actual disk, I cannot tell you. Never had to do this with a Toshiba.

If a dual boot is what you are after, your best bet is to borrow a OEM disk from someone and do an install using the CD key on the bottom of your laptop.

Some cd keys are generic OEM keys and some are manufacturer specific, so it may not work, but it is your best bet if a dual boot system is your goal.

 

maybe try and completely format the harddrive. that way your computer thinks it's an upgrade.

 

Guys, the answer is already posted (or I think it is)

wipe the drive, partition and format, run dmicfg.exe, install windows using recovery disk.

 

ya know, I will try that, I have found a tiny vista disc laying around I can use to format the hard drive.

also when installing ubuntu I only clicked "use whole hard drive" and I don't remember the computer taking time on formating.

thanks for the idea,
-Tyler

 

Just for future reference, if you don't have a Vista disk or something lying around, you can always use GParted (burn it to a CD) to do your formatting. It's quite nice.

Cheers...

 

I tried reformatting it and it still didn't work.

I'm starting to think the disc maybe damaged, however I just cut the middleman and just installed tiny vista.

my 1.5 ghz celeron and 512mb of ram with intel extreme graphics actually run this tiny version of vista pretty well... could this old pc be win7 capable?

either way my hptx2510us should be back from the hp service center in a few days,
-Tyler