i'm trying to reinstall windows on my friends toshiba satellite m55-s135. His current version of windows got corrupted somehow and i opted for a reformat.

I began by going to bios and setting the cdrom drive as the primary boot drive and disabled all other boot sources except for the hard drive which i left as secondary.

after that i saved, and resetted the computer with the xp cd in the drive. It booted up fine, and loaded all the drivers as well, but when it gets to the "setup is starting windows" screen it hangs.

i thought it was a hard drive problem so i swapped it out with an extra hard drive i had lying around but i still get the same problem.

does anyone have any idea what the problem might be? i'm thinking that i might need to use a restore disc directly from toshiba.

if anyone can verify this, i'll go ahead and order one right away unless you might no a place i can pick up a disc for cheaper.

Some "big brand" computers supplied with recovery media (or a recovery partition to create a set of discs from yourself) are 'locked' with a chip on the motherboard to not accept any attempts to install from a regular XP CD, or any other version of Windows for that matter.

I tried to do the same with my sons Packard Bell PC just out of curiosity before doing a full recovery on it. Didn't even get as far as you did. Setup just locked up as soon as it started.

In any event, if that XP CD you used wasn't supplied with that laptop, it would be illegal to install it anyway. Even assuming you somehow got it to install, the activation would fail.

wait, it would be illegal for me to install windows on it even if i used to the supply cd key that came with the laptop?

i guess ill have to call toshiba directly.

microsoft cds have a hologram look to it

it will say on the cd not to make illegal copies if it

and its kinda silvery with microsoft logo on it

also microsoft should be written in a s square box

thats how my xp home is and my xp pro

This post has been edited by rushin1nd: Jan 24 2007, 03:11 PM

lol.

i'm sorry i didnt clarify. on the back of the laptop, a cd key for microsoft xp home edition is supplied. but we don't have the recovery cd. I thought i could use a normal cd and boot up using that key i've done it before on a sony vaio desktop before and all i had to do was phone in to an automated machine, punch in the cd key, and then write/type down the confirmation number.

if i purchase a recovery cd it should work for sure?

What you did was "activate" your XP home to the laptop. It is already "activated" to your other computer.
That, per MS is illegal. It has been done though, but, per their activation/ licensing agreement, it is illegal.

You should have received recovery cd's with the laptop. You should call them.
Also you can ask if they would send a XP home standard cd to you. My son did that with his MOM's comp that had recovery cd's and he got the full XP home CD.

Whether that will resolve your install issue is questionable.
You could reformat and partition using the HD manufacturers program. That will usually work better that letting XP format.

if it has a manufacture recovery partition then thats what the product key is for and not for the recovery disk

i called into tech support and they told me that the bios puts some kind of lock onto the hard drive. I had to purchase the recovery cd for about $40 because the laptop was out of warranty.

hopefully the cd is the answer to the problem.
i'll post here if i have anymore questions.

thanks
Kalian

p.s. 123 i did not commit any illegal activity. I was working on a friends sony vaio once because her hard drive crashed. I replaced it, installed windows from an original cd because i did not have the recovery cd's that came with her computer, but i called in to ms using a key that was legally purchased and stickered to her computer.

They then gave me an automated activation number. The windows key was already paid for. Why should she have to pay for a key again if its the same computer and was already provided to her when she purchased it?