Toshiba Laptop Factory Restore

Hello everyone. First time to the site and first post. Great being here.

First off..a few weeks back I installed a trial verison of Vista on my laptop. I let it go its 14 days before I had to enter a product key. Over these 14 days, it caused alot of problems on my computer and do not wish to keep Vista on my system. I would like to go back to good ol XP. When I go boot up my computer and log in, it takes me a screen saying this is not a genuine version of windows and I need to go online to purchase a KEY. Well it give me internet explorer and that is all, nothing else is shown. No start button or taskbar. Well..since I haven't been able to find any one withhow to uninstall Vista, I decided I want to factory reset my computer, format and all and start over. All of my documents are saved on my external drive so there is nothing I need to keep.

So last week I went to command prompt and tried to format the harddrive that way, with no luck, it gave me some message about the partition being locked or something. So I wasn't able to do it that way. So I found my recovery disk. On the case it says to put it in the dvd/cd drive and start up my computer..why its starting up hold down the c button until it comes to the toshiba screen and then start the process. So I put it in my external drive, my internal one doesnt work so well, and I had problems, either it did nothing at all or it acts like it might and just says your computer wasnt shut down properly last time and asks me which mode I want to start up in. I can get my computer wiped clean for $160 bucks at the computer shop, but I think I can do this myself, or am I nuts? HELP PLEASE!

Don't pay $160 to wipe it.

Are you booting to the XP CD? Then going through the re-installation?

Do you have an XP disc to reinstall XP?

Hello all..I am using a disc which reads Toshiba Recovery and Applications/Drivers DVD..I do believe this has XP on it or am I mistaken?

My computer had windows media center on it, but I am almost positive a windows disk didnt't come with the system, I think it was just the recovery disk.. icould be wrong.

Is this the disk that came with the laptop?

if it is, it will format the hard drive and put the laptop as if it just came from the factory, including XP and all the crud that was on it originally.

Yes this is the disk that came with the laptop, btu I cannot get it to load! I am not sure how to get it work. Like I said, I put it in my external drive and press the c button until it gets to the toshiba screen and it does nothing!

Do you see any option anywhere on the Toshiba screen that says something like ... "BOOT MENU - Press F9" or do you see the option for a boot menu anywhere else?

Actually F2 is setup and F12 is the Boot Menu

Actually the best way to boot most toshibas is to use the {CTRL}{C} while the bios screen is on this will boot the CD directly.

Another way is to hit the {ESC} key before windows starts, and then select the optical drive

I swtiched the boot menu and put removeable items first then cd/dvd drive and then the hard drive. When I got to the toshiba screen and held down the c button, I got a message "Disk I/O Error" "Replace the Disk and Press Any Key!" This disk works! I know it does! No scratches or anything on it plus I have tried it on two other computers!

Is everyone out of ideas?!

did you change the boot order in the bios?

If you have not, try that next.

Make sure that there are no fingerprints, dust or dirt on the dvd.

Once the boot order has been changed, leave the dvd in the drive, and completely restart the machine, it should boot from the optical drive.

I swtiched the boot menu and put removeable items first then cd/dvd drive and then the hard drive. When I got to the toshiba screen and held down the c button, I got a message "Disk I/O Error" "Replace the Disk and Press Any Key!" This disk works! I know it does! No scratches or anything on it plus I have tried it on two other computers!

Change it again, this time to boot from CD/DVD first, then HD.

It should then boot off of that Recovery Disk without any intervention.

Well my internal CD/DVD drive is not working, so should I do removable items then HD?