Laptop: Flatten aToshiba Portege

Bonusbertie

Bonusbertie

Bonusbertie

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29 Apr 2009
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25
Bad news: yesterday I was made redundant, with one weeks notice! Nice Xmas present eh?

Good news: we think the co. won't come hunting (we are all based remotely) for our laptops and I'd like to see the possibility of loading my own OS as soon the co. give us the go ahead.

It seems to be super laden with security though ie no option to F2 to bios, no option to slip in a Win XP disc and boot from there.

If the co. DO give us the ok to do this (no data is stored on the HDD anyway) is there any suggestions on how to go about flattening this so I can start again?

It's got a swivel screen and turns into a tablet thingy which is quite cool.

Thanks

BB :cool:
 
Could try resetting the CMOS by taking the battery out and putting back in. Although they can be tricky to access in laptops.

If that doesn't work, then you could try reflashing the bios if you can fins the right ones for the laptop model.
 
Sorry to hear your bad news.

You don't mention which Toshiba Portege you have (it is on the label on the bottom of the unit) but trying holding down ESC when powering on and then press F1 when prompted to enter the BIOS.

If you just want to boot from a CD, insert the disk, turn off the unit, turn it back on holding down C, then depending on the model you can either select the CD/DVD icon or CD/DVD from a list.
 
Hi Sparky, thanks for the reply.

It is a Portege M400, I have left the notebook in my cupboard for two months and it is clear the company aren't interested in recovering it.

Ive tried the "escape and F1" trick, it enters what might look like the first page of a BIOS, but then no keys work to allow me to select or change any settings. Also there are two more pages in these settings but I can't acess them either as they are meant to be accessed using the page down key, but that doesnt work either.

I know the keyboard works 100%. It looks like that the firm has disabled he use of keys on this screen? I can still exit hitting escape again though!

I also tried turning the notebook on whilst holding down "C" to no avail (just a lot of irritable beeping) whilst there was a copy of Win XP SP3 in the dvd drive.

All I want to do is wipe the OS and put on my own, which I've done exactly one gazillion times with other notebooks/desktops.

Does anyone have any ideas please? I'm moving abroad for a while and could do wih taking this with me to skype my kids and wife back home.

Cheers

BB
 
One thought is taking the hard drive out and installing an operating system onto it from a different computer. Linux would cope quite well with this, but I'm not sure how to make windows behave when changing hardware.

Flashing the bios is the approach I'd take if possible.
 
Bonusbertie said:
Hi Sparky, thanks for the reply.

It is a Portege M400, I have left the notebook in my cupboard for two months and it is clear the company aren't interested in recovering it.

Ive tried the "escape and F1" trick, it enters what might look like the first page of a BIOS, but then no keys work to allow me to select or change any settings. Also there are two more pages in these settings but I can't acess them either as they are meant to be accessed using the page down key, but that doesnt work either.

I know the keyboard works 100%. It looks like that the firm has disabled he use of keys on this screen? I can still exit hitting escape again though!

I also tried turning the notebook on whilst holding down "C" to no avail (just a lot of irritable beeping) whilst there was a copy of Win XP SP3 in the dvd drive.

All I want to do is wipe the OS and put on my own, which I've done exactly one gazillion times with other notebooks/desktops.

Does anyone have any ideas please? I'm moving abroad for a while and could do wih taking this with me to skype my kids and wife back home.

Cheers

BB
Click to expand...

it sounds like they've locked the BIOS down - you're going to need to dismantle the laptop until you can unplug the BIOS battery to reset the CMOS. once you've done that you ought to have full control again.
 
[ESC] then [F1] might not work for you to get into the BIOS, but what about [F12] does that bring up the boot menu and let you choose CD/DVD?

Certainly works on my M300.
 
Some of the Toshibas you cant reset the BIOS even if you take out the CMOS battery. Its unusual that you cant even get into the password prompt though.
 
Thanks for the advice everyone. Not too keen on opening it up but it looks like my options are limited. I've got a techie friend who I'll give a call who can talk me through it.

Paradigm - yes, I tried F12 too - that didn't work either :-(

Cheers

BB
 
Before you crack it open fully, have a look if theres a piece of film stuck on the board next to the ram slots, under that there might be a couple of points on the board you can bridge for 30 secs or so to reset the CMOS settings. I cant remember the exact location but they just look like 2 solder points with no real purpose, about 5-10mm apart IIRC.
 
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