Recovering a laptop?

obieone

I've got a 4.5 y.o. Toshiba Satelite laptop, that came with Vista. I want to recover it, but install an old XP Pro os. The XP is from 2003 or so, and don't know if it'll work.
I know how to recover on a desktop-'delete, delete, delete', until I get to the DOS screen, just don't know if this is the same routine for laptops?

TIA:redface:

WilliamM2

The delete key usually takes you into the bios, not a DOS screen. Recover, or restore is usually on a hidden partition on the drive, since you want to install a different OS, that won't work.

You need to boot to the XP CD, follow the instructions to format the drive, and install from scratch. But before you do that, go to the manufacturers site, and make sure you can get all the drivers you will need for XP on that laptop, with many of them, there is no support for anything but the OS that came installed on them.

obieone

Nuts. Sounds like it may be hit or miss, and possibly a huge waste of time.
I just hate vista, and the bundled b.s. that came with it.

WilliamM2

As long as you can get the needed drivers, it will work. It may take a bit of effort though. It would be a lot easier to install Win 7 if you are just trying to get away from Vista.

obieone

I'm recovering it right now, w/ the original disk. It'll take about 10 hours, just to get it back working, then I'll have to do updates, and Adobe, etc.
Last time it took 2 days

devani

make backup as soon as you have all the programs installed...before anything else.

obieone

This thing had some Vista 2012 virus, so I'm doing a complete nuke job on it. It's just so damn slooooooooow.

cokewithvanilla

devani wrote: »

make backup as soon as you have all the programs installed...before anything else.

I second that. Make a backup of your entire drive after the load (including MBR). If you ever need to reload, simply load the backup and your computer will be just as it was when you made the backup. Acronis True Image is what I use. If you have multiple systems, Acronis Snap Deploy or Clonezilla is your best friend.

Jstas

Here's a pretty good way to Recover the Satellites.

<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jyc20a3MSDM&quot; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Sorry, had to. Saw the thread title and clicked on it saying "PLEASE be a Toshiba Satellite! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be a Toshiba Satellite!"

obieone

Are the Toshi's notoriously slow in recovery, or is it Vista?

WilliamM2

Usually takes a little over half an hour on our Toshiba's at work. Maybe the hard drive is failing? Shouldn't take anywhere near 6 hours.

Syndil

It's not the recovery process itself that takes up all the time, it's the downloading and installing of various Windows updates, service packs and driver updates after the recovery is complete. I usually block about 5 hours per machine. Of course you don't have to sit there and baby sit it the whole time, but that's how long it usually takes. Definitely should not take 10 hours for just the recovery process, however, if that's what he's saying.

obieone

Well, it took 9+ hours to erase the hdd, then a couple more, just to get it back to operational level. Tonight I'll do the updates, etc.

WilliamM2

That doesn't sound right at all. I'd run a hard drive utility to check for problems. It should have been done in less than an hour. Or did you do some type of secure erase that overwrites the drive a dozen times?

Syndil

9+ hours to erase a HDD? Yeah, that's not right. Even a low-level format of a high-capacity drive should only take an hour or two, and that's not at all necessary to perform a recovery. Just delete the partition, which is done instantly, create a new one in its place, and then on to a high-level format and reinstallation.