I had been having a lot of issues with my old Toshiba Satelite laptop.

It had been running Windows ME.
(which someone installed to replace the original windows '98)

Major bogging and glitches and so forth so I decided to doa reinstall and start over with the original factory software.

I followed the directions exactly.

shut off. insert CD, hold down "C" key until Test Screen appears
hit y twice

It then slowly formats the h.d, and writes the allocation table. When it says it's now going to install software it stops and gives an error message of some kind saying it can't continue and you are left with two options. 1. start over the whole process or 2. shutdown

Since it has allready formatted the h.d. I am left with nothing.

Anyone have any ideas???

I am not a p.c wizard and need to figure this out

Could I make a bootdisk somehow to get a prompt??

 

did you try a reboot with the windows disk in the cd rom??

 

Yep That's what I was doing and that's what the directions call for


Put Windows 98 CD in the drive. Turn power on and hold down the "C" key until the Toshiba logo thing comes up

 

Im sure theres someone that knows more than I do......

 

What tool said. ME absolutely sucks the big one. I tried to use it but it crashed my system half a dozen times before I wised up that it wasn't me and it as the software. I pitched the disc in the trash. Now if I could only get Bill to give me my $90 back....

 

ME's on my girlfriends machine.....worst OS Microcrap ever put out.

 

If you have another PC, use it to create a Startup Diskette. Boot the diskette and use it to do an FDISK to remove the partition off the hard drive then Recreate the partition.

Use Format to format the partition and then put in the CD and run setup.

The factory CD from Toshiba may be bad or isn't getting past a problem with the format on the HD. After you manually FDISK and FORMAT the factory CD may run better. I have no experience with the Toshiba Factory CD so I can't say what's up with it. It may have applications that get installed only by running the default install.

Try calling Toshiba tech support. Alternatively you could upgrade to Windows XP.

Edwin

 

O.K,
Thanks for the input edwin.

But I'm afraid you're going to have to dumb that down a little.

I'm highly computer illiterate. Can I make the startup disk from any p.c? All the ones I have access to run XP. will that work?

How do I FDISK and create a partition?

Sorry for the stupidity. But could you give me a step by step?

Thanks.

 

The PC to make a startup disk should be either Win 98 or WinME.

Fdisk is a utility that's included on the startup disk. To run fdisk, you boot from the startup disk then type FDISK at the command prompt.

You then follow directions on the screen and delete any partitions on the hard disk. Then you create a partition on the hard disk which usually will be the entire hard disk in one partition. You can create multiple partitions if you like but usually you just want one big partition which fills the entire disk. once you have created the partition you'll need to reboot the startup disk.

Format is another utility on the startup disk which creates the file system on the hard disk partition. To run it, you boot the startup disk and type Format C: /u

The /u says unconditional format.

The startup disk has a CDROM driver and the CDrom will probably be drive E: so you would type E:setup to start the install process from the CDROM.

If you don't have another PC with Win98 or WinME maybe you have a friend who does. The startup disk is created by going to Control panel then Add/remove programs then click the startup disk tab ( I think). If you can't figure it out then give me a call and I'll fire up my WinME and walk you through it. I might ba a little off here and there but that's substantially the process.

Edwin

Freehold Consulting
502 Lewis
Coffeyville, KS 67337
(620) 251-6496

 

Thank you very much for your help. I'll try that. I appreciate your trouble.

 

I'd like to upgrade to XP but......

1. Don't know if my older laptop would run it, but people tell me it has smaller requirements than ME?? How much disk space does it take up?

2. It is quite exspensive to buy. I'd rather get by for now and then buy a new machine later with a current O.S preinstalled.

 

Windows XP generally takes more memory and processor speed than 98 or ME but it is much more stable. Given the prices of new laptops you are probably better off getting a new laptop with XP preinstalled.

I have XP running on my Toshiba Satelite which has a 600 mhz celeron processor and 168 megs of ram. It's slow but I am patient.

Edwin

 

Yeah. I think this is only 440 MHZ and 96 Megs of ram so it would be slower still