I am trying to recover the factory software image on my Toshiba Portege notebook.
I have an old Toshiba Portege 2000 and I am trying to recover the factory software image. I have the CDs and it recognizes the CD drive. The problem is that the recovery CD boots up in DOS and the recovery utility never runs. All the setup files are hidden.
When I put that same CD into another computer the recovery begins automatically.
Any ideas on how to get the process going on the Portege?
If the notebook CD drive works fine, the software recovery process for this model shouldn’t be different than for any other laptop. You place the recovery CD in the drive and restart the notebook. If you have default settings in BIOS, the CD drive should be listed in the boot order before the hard drive disk and the notebook should start booting from the recovery disk. You can also try to press the “C” key on start up as soon as Toshiba logo appears on the screen to make sure that the notebook boots from the CD drive.
I just found a support bulletin for Toshiba Portege 2000 notebook that explains how to fix “ERD difficulties with Windows 98 preinstalled machines”, not sure if it somehow related to your problem so check it out.
If you get a “Wrong Machine” error message when you try to run the recovery disk, check this support bulletin.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I just brought a HP dv5 and HP recommended to create a recovery disc to be sure that information can be restored to its orginal factory state. They did not provide me with a disc when I purchased the laptop.
When I put a DVD+R disk in and it starts to download (creating files, writing files, verifying disc) the information, it stops and it says, “recording failure when writing disk 1(20. Would you like to retry? I even went to buy more disks because I thought something was wrong with my DVD+R. I tried it numerous of times and I still get the same message. What am I doing wrong?
January 20th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
I was running into a problem with the resore disk not wanting to boot (or any other windows boot cd). I removed the screw from the toshiba laptop and removed the drive. I hooked up a desktop dvd player to a USB to IDE converter cable and was able to boot into the recovery just fine. This was with a toshiba a100 a105 laptop.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:48 am
My Toshiba L20 crashed last week i used the recovery disk to recover but when restarted it says it cannot locate the operating system any ideas
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:29 am
I have done them on desktops pc how would you wipe a laptop hard drive.
July 1st, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Brian,
I believe, you cannot downgrade XP Pro to Home. You’ll have to reinstall XP Home from scratch.
July 1st, 2008 at 12:12 pm
If this ibm laptop has windows pro on it how do i go back to windows home version. How do you wipe a laptop hard drive?
June 25th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Brian,
Using F11 key on startup should activate the recovery partition so you can restore factory defaults.
If the hard drive was replaced before, most likely it doesn’t have the recovery partition and that’s why F11 key doesn’t work for you. Do you know if the hard drive had been replaced?
You can try calling IBM (I mean Lenovo) again and ask if they can sell you the recovery disc.
Also, I found that you can buy a new IBM hard drive (80GB or 160GB) WITH restore CD’s included with the hard drive in this store. You can go this route as a last resort.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
It is already enabled. It doesn’t give me the option.