OEM disks won't work!!

[Gary Allan]

This isn't working as it's supposed to.


I have an older Toshiba Satellite 1905-S277. It's getting a little fuzzy and glitchy. I'm not using it for much ..but I've gone wireless and wanted to allow my wife to use it in the kitchen (which isn't cabled ). So, I decide to drop back and punt and use the OEM CD's to restore it to OEM condition. Once I did that, I'd get the Service Pack 2 updates for it.

When I go to do this, I get promoted to reboot and hold the "C" key down so it will boot from the CD/DVD drive. This part works okay ..it goes to a setup MSDOS sorta window ..then WRONG MACHINE shows up in multi-line words.

Any end runarounds??

These, without a doubt, are the OEM disks that came with the laptop.

 

[goldfinger]

I ran into this before working on a Toshiba laptop. I replaced the hard drive with a Western Digital instead of Toshiba and it wouldn't restore.

Try this as a work around:

Boot with the restore CD and when it gives you the "wrong machine" it should give you a command prompt. On that prompt change to the drive letter of the CD-ROM.

Type "dir" on the command line to get a list of directories and look for a folder called base. Change to that folder by typing "cd base". Inside that folder your should find os.bat You should be able to start the restore process by typing "os.bat" on the command line.

Good Luck

 

[Squishy]

There's a tool that lets you change the machine model code in the BIOS somewhere. I'll dig into my old files and see if I can find it. This problem comes up every time I send it in for warranty repairs; they seem to always put a 1905 motherboard in my 1900.

You could just straight install Windows. I could send you all the driver files from my Satellite 1900; it should be the same as the 1905.

 

[Squishy]

Gary, here's the DMI string update utility from Toshiba:

http://askiris.toshiba.com/ToshibaSuppor...0%200%206707933

To get mine to work, I just changed the DMI string to my model number. I can't remember if I used my specific model number or not (e.g., "Satellite 1905" or "Satellite 1905-S277"), but you can play around with it until the disks work again.

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:

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Try this as a work around:

Boot with the restore CD and when it gives you the "wrong machine" it should give you a command prompt. On that prompt change to the drive letter of the CD-ROM.

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Yep. Tried it. It won't see the drive at that point. It wants a floppy. It just leaves you at A:\\ and won't switch.

Quote:

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To get mine to work, I just changed the DMI string to my model number. I can't remember if I used my specific model number or not (e.g., "Satellite 1905" or "Satellite 1905-S277"), but you can play around with it until the disks work again.

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Yes. After digging around on the support section at Toshiba I found the file needed to fix this situation.

Thanks for the replies! I'm getting stale in my old age. These challenges used to be fun for me. Now I'm so far behind the curve ..I drop back and punt ..and even find that a challenge

 

[eljefino]

If you have any other working computers running xp burn the i386 folder within windows to CDROM. Find a suitable boot image online then use nero's boot image function to make the CD ROM bootable.

Presto, instant windows XP CD ROM.

Use the XP product key sticker on the bottom of the computer like you normally would then find the necessary drivers online. I assume there's no real bundled software besides the OS you care to use.