I have an M200 tabletPC, and toshiba have locked down (crippled) the bios so hard that they want me to spend $500 on a proprietary 4x speed 16-bit CD-Rom to boot from anything other than the HDD. It's now way past time to re-install Windows, and I want to get the OS CD onto the HDD in such a way that I can boot into the OS install (just LIKE booting from CD). I have a new large HDD for the purpose, but copying files from the CD to the root of the HDD doesn't work - I need to somehow get the boot image from the OS CD onto the HDD in the right location/format. HOW??? Best viewed at 1024x768 (and with a computer)

Just curious, what do you mean by: It's now way past time to re-install Windows ?

Windows is becoming slow and unstable. Freezes for 2-3 minutes at a time roughly 3-4 times every hour for no apparent reason (no disk, cpu, or network activity). I've defrag'd the hdd and run registry cleaners. Debugging tools indicate that it's svchost, lsass, winlogon, smss, and other critical system processes that are hanging. These can't be replaced (even in safe mode) with fresh copies, because I cannot boot from CD. I've also replaced the RAM by paying twice the normal price for toshiba's 'special' ram, but no good. I need to re-install windows somehow, as it has been heavily used for over 2 years now. I hope I've satisfied your curiosity and you have a suggested solution? Best viewed at 1024x768 (and with a computer)

>>>I hope I've satisfied your curiosity and you have a suggested solution<<< Yes, curiosity satisfied. But I've used XP very heavily on a desktop for over 4 years now without having to reinstall (and it runs pretty much 24/7 and has had multiple programs installed/uninstalled). Thus the question... If the machine has bootable USB (certainly it should), I'd recommend installing from it rather than from the HDD: http://www.vandomburg.net/installin... http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/in... (as stated at top, not just for the EeePC) http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8 http://www.msfn.org/board/How-to-in... Or if you have another machine (and a 2.5 to 3.5" drive cable adapter; and don't mind tinkering with hardware): http://www.syschat.com/install-wind...

Your point is a good one, that I should be trying to boot from USB as a first option. I'm Still investigating some of the links, and have tried multiple times to boot from USB. I've tried 5 different USB sticks from various manufacturers (including Toshiba) and BartPE (among other methods). I've tried 3 different SD cards (not toshiba - can't afford that one), and as a side issue discovered that the SD slot will not recognise an SD card larger than 1Gb. Booting from and external floppy drive is not an option either, for the same reason that I can't get an external USB CD drive recognised. As for the stability of my Windows installation, I would like to be able to blame someone else for that, but this is my first laptop, which I purchased for study. I'd like to think that I've learnt a lot, but when I first got the laptop I 'tried out' some software I wouldn't want to touch now (such as 'updated' kernel-mode drivers from Microsoft Update), and I'm surprised it has remained working for this long. According to Toshiba (not just the manual, but speaking to their tech support) my M200 will NOT boot from USB unless it is proprietary Toshiba junk. Specifically to boot from USB I apparently need to purchase a particular Toshiba part number, which is a 4x speed CD-ROM that connects to the M200 via a 16-bit cable into a special PCMCIA adapter. I know there are options at startup (F12) to boot from floppy, SD card, or CD. Unfortunately I haven't paid over $150 for the 'special' Toshiba 256Mb SD card, or the AUD$514 I was quoted from Toshiba for their pathetic 4-speed 16-bit CD reader. Depending on who I speak to at Toshiba, the cable and PCMCIA adapter are either included or up to AUD$230 extra. I've purchased a PCMCIA card with USB ports, but that doesn't do the job either. I've found references on msfn to having a specially formatted and named boot image or VFD file - without which the M200 will immediately 'run home' to the HDD without even trying other options. Those options can be set in the BIOS boot order, but there are a very limited number of options, and ANY delays or errors will force the machine to boot from HDD only. Regardless of BIOS and boot menu, the only way I can get the machine to even try booting from network is by completely removing the HDD, which kind of defeats the purpose if I'm trying to re-install windows. Does this explain why I want to boot from the HDD? It is the only thing I can guarantee to be recognised at boot, and really my last option to get a fresh copy of windows on my laptop without sending the machine away for up to a month and spending a week's wages on restoring the Toshiba crapware that came with the original image. The tablet part is fantastic, but not worth this kind of pain. I'll never buy another machine without in-built optical again! Best viewed at 1024x768 (and with a computer)

The problem with booting from the HDD is that (unless I'm badly mistaken, which I could easily be) WinXP (or, I would suppose, any "NT" based Windows OS) has no real "Setup.exe" per se in the installation (like Win9x does). Whatever device that has the files to do the installation really can't reside where the final installation will be (thus having to boot from something external from the HDD is almost a must). Might have been different with anything before NT4, and you might be able to partition the drive to where it can hold the CD's files to do an installation from that partition (assuming you can somehow fake it into thinking it's looking at a CD-Rom, USB Drive or something else which it could do an installation from). It does sound like you're getting a big crap-out from Toshiba (one of the reasons I refuse to buy anything from them anymore). There has to be another way (short of removing the HDD and installing in another machine---which could possibly upchuck once it sees it's been swapped back to the Toshiba...) >>>"As for the stability of my Windows installation, I would like to be able to blame someone else for that, but this is my first laptop, which I purchased for study. I'd like to think that I've learnt a lot, but when I first got the laptop I 'tried out' some software I wouldn't want to touch now (such as 'updated' kernel-mode drivers from Microsoft Update), and I'm surprised it has remained working for this long."<<< Don't feel bad. My first machine was a 486-33 and it took me quite a while to figure out that Windows 3.1 ran much better when it had a swapfile and devices were loaded into high-memory when DOS booted. It's all a learning process. Once I had XP Pro SP2 running on my current desktop, I updated once, added anti-virus/spyware/adware applications (which update frequently) and never did the updates from M$ again...

I've had another look at the original recovery CDs (4 of them), and about half the content across the entire set is crapware. For example, there is a trial version of norton from 2002. Why this is included in a machine manufactured in early 2006 will remain a puzzle. The good news, is that there seem to be a lot of large files with .gho extensions. I might try copying them all out, join them into a single image, then write them to the HDD as a if restoring a single disc image. I haven't used ghost for a couple of years, but it night be worth a try. Do you know if this is even possible, or whether there is software around that can open ghost images like a file system and browse/change things? I suppose at worst I'll end up with a factory install, and can remove the extras manually. Best viewed at 1024x768 (and with a computer)