Comments on: I am trying to recover the factory software image on my Toshiba Portege notebook.

By: Braden

Braden — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 23:57:03 +0000

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro L500 and I want to re – format it. I have windows 7 and I have made the recovery disk (there is 4 of them). I have stored all the files I want to keep on disk, and now I want to know how to use the recovery disk so that I can start over again? I would also like to know will all the Toshiba software that came with the laptop still be there after the process and will I still have windows 7?

By: Kimmesha

Kimmesha — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:12:26 +0000

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?

By: tim

tim — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:50:39 +0000

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.

By: Irate

Irate — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:48:26 +0000

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

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:29:48 +0000

I have done them on desktops pc how would you wipe a laptop hard drive.

By: Laptop Freak

Laptop Freak — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:24:36 +0000

Brian,

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?

I believe, you cannot downgrade XP Pro to Home. You’ll have to reinstall XP Home from scratch.

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:12:23 +0000

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?

By: Laptop Freak

Laptop Freak — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:33:33 +0000

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.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:59:29 +0000

It is already enabled. It doesn’t give me the option.

By: Laptop Freak

Laptop Freak — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:26:01 +0000

Brian,

i called ibm and they told me to press f11 on bootup. it doesn’t do anything but boot right into windows.

I was reading on one of the ThinkPad forums that you can enable/disable the F11 function in the BIOS. Can enable that?