error with toshiba satellite a500 intial setup

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kiwijackal

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#60371 25-Apr-2010 22:32

I bought a toshiba satellite a500 today, and was in the process of the initial setup to get it to factory default. my problem is that the fuse tripped a few minutes into the setup (someone used a mixer), and power went out. it screwed up the setup, and it will now not do anything. I imagine this means I have to pay some extortionate amount to toshiba to get them to send a recovery disc that should have already been included with the laptop - is that correct, or is there a way around this?

timestyles

424 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 1

#322853 26-Apr-2010 00:15

According to http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/product/pdf_files/detailed_specs/satellite_A500-ST6644.pdf the A500 has a recovery media creator, which probably means that you can make a bootable DVD which will create a hidden partition on a new hard drive, so you can almost certainly recreate what has been damaged (Windows, presumably). Or at least that's what my Toshiba laptop has. Try holding down the 0 (zero) key and turn on the laptop. You may need to download the manual from Toshiba's website if that doesn't work. Good luck!

kiwijackal

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#323060 26-Apr-2010 14:43

cool, thanks for the info timestyles. In the meantime, I've been able to repair the initial install that the store had on the laptop, but it looks like that hidden partition was damaged somehow, as it won't let me create a recovery disc.
A thought occured to me, however: a friend has recently put together a win7 machine. Would I be able to use his win7 disc (same version, home premium) with my product key to install win7 properly, with my details etc? The current install is only 32-bit as that's what the store chose, and I'd like to use all 4GB of RAM that came with the laptop, so a 64-bit install is needed. That, and it'd be nice to have my name all over the computer, rather than the store's.
I know I'd then need to sort out the specific drivers for the laptop, but all that stuff looks like it's available on the Toshiba website, so I'm not too fussed as long as I can get 64-bit win7 running on the computer.