i managed to fix my laptop only to be a bright spark and begin installing windows again coz it desperatly needed it.

however i didnt realise i need some special toshiba xp disc to do this and now windows xp wont work properly at all. i am limited to turning the laptop on and off

You should be able to get another copy of the disc from Toshiba, for a price.

I hope that you don't mind me sharing my experience with a Toshiba laptop recently with a co-worker's unit.

My co-workers son decided that he wanted to re-install windows. He totally re-formated the hard drive, to find the same issue. I attempted to recover it for him. In my research I found that many Toshiba laptops have a hidden primary partition that holds recovery data and apparently some bios settings as well. After some failed attempts, I suggested that he get a copy of the recovery disk from Toshiba, which he did (note: Toshiba support wants verification that you are a valid owner of the laptop before they will ship a recovery cd for $30 USD). Still the system would not recover from the recovery cd.

It seems that the disk looks for the recovery data (which he deleted from the hard drive in the re-format), so the disk would not proceed with the recovery. Apparently, the disk also will not complete at all unless it sees the hard drive partitioned exactly with the hidden partition size intact.

I know I was in trouble when I posted on a Toshiba support forum and here and received no responses. IT folks at my job site admitted that they had run into the same issues.

My co-worker sent the unit back to Toshiba and they recovered the system for a price.

So, just be prepared to run into some difficulties if you formatted the recovery partition in the process of reinstalling Windows.

So, I suggest doing some research and I hope that you can get a response from Toshiba or any forum posts that works.

cheers i did so and as u said they suggested the recovery cd for a price but i decided not to because when i reinstalled windows it formats the hard drive so nuffin is there. the only answer is to ship it off.

So, you are sure that the recovery partition is actually gone? I'm not sure that the Windows install deletes this partition, as it is marked as hidden. You might want to look at this before you ship the unit off. If Toshiba suggested the recovery disk first, they may feel that based on what you did (from what they asked you when you spoke to them), the recovery partition may still be there.

you know, you could of installed ubuntu on a new partition and actual browsed the *hidden* partition, which isn't really hidden btw. But if you delete that, yes you won't be able to restore the manufacturer's sealed configuration.. HOWEVER, you can wipe it clean and do a fresh re-install of Windows XP and just download the drivers from Toshiba site. I always keep a secondary OS to be prepared for things like this (although last time i re-formatted was 2004). Good Luck!!