Let me start by saying this site is so helpful! You guys are so wonderful for doing all you do for people! THANK YOU!!! Especially Chris... He totally fixed a prob for me on! I am so grateful!

Anyway... I had the same problem on a laptop I have but waaaaay worse... I can't get on the net and I'm not even showing anything in my network connections... Can't do anything with it really and I'm soooooooo tired of trying... There is nothing on it that I care about at this point so I just want to reformat it... I don't have an XP Pro cd though... How can I do it w/o? I have the serial number but I don't know anyone with an xp pro cd... Plus I know I'll need to be walked through it anyway... The laptop/xp pro is legal I promise!

Can it be done w/o a cd?

If you purchased the laptop new and it came with XP, they should have given you a restore disk that will return your computer to the same setup as when you first purchased it. OR there may be a restore partition on your hard driver. Do you have the documentation that came with the computer?

If the above is not applicable, please post the manufacture & model, the processor and approximate age of the lap.

Thanks for such a fast reply!

I have nothing for it... It wasn't purchased new, It's a laptop that was laying around at work that I unfortunately let my 12 year old use... (STUPID move, I know) ... I'm a graphic artist so we're all on macs (which I prefer ) and I'm the only one that even knows a lil bit about PCs so I'm free to use it for personal use as long as I'm employed there but have NFI where the cd is...... (plus I'm embarrassed... I don't wanna return it all fugged up... They'll just blame it on being a PC...

Anyway... It is a Toshiba Tecra - Centrino Duo Not sure how old but I don't think its more than a few years...

System restore won't work says its unavailable etc... Nothing will really work on it to be honest...

Go to my computer and see if there is a restore partion my toshiba has one

Actually, if it is a duo core it's not that old, dual core processors haven't been out all that long. I am afraid you will need a system disk the same as the type of XP is installed. XP Home, or XP Pro or XP Corporate. Then is very simple, honest. A repair reinstall will probably straighten it out, and most of that is just sitting and waiting for the computer to do its thing. Sounds like it might be a nice little unit.

There is no restore partitian... This thing is seriously screwed up...

If your laptop uses XP, you may first try a repair install (Local upgrade) as described here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315341
This will overwrite any corrupted OS files, thus preserving your data.

If you decide to reformat/reinstall Windows from scratch, you'll need to reload the proper drivers. Hopefully, they can be found here: http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su...kceghdgngdgmn.0

Do not reinstall any BIOS updates, as this may definitely trash your system.

Chris

Basically there is nothing I can really do w/o the xp cd is there? Unless I missed something in Chris's link...

If you don’t have a Windows XP installation CD, then there is no way to reformat your hard drive and installing XP.

I don't even know where to begin to try and fix it then... I'm trying to track down the cd at work but no luck so far... Any suggestions on where to start to fix it w/o reformatting then?

Why don’t you start by posting a HijackThis log file to see what’s causing the problem with your machine?