Toshiba laptop

[backburner]

Hi
I have been given an old Toshiba laptop with Win95 installed and skads of other previous owner files. I'd like to wipe out the HDD completely before I use it and reinstall the OS. I found a program called Zero Fill but it's apparently designed exclusively for Quantum drives. Does anyone have advise on my next step?

bb

[catfishjoe_1]

backburner
do you have the windows disk? Is it a full install? If the answer to these questions is yes you should be able to format from dos and then install the os but you should get more opinions than mine alone. If the hard drive has bios info on it you will need to save that and you should try to backup the current drivers before formatting
cat

[Mac Medic]

If you have the win95 boot disk, just run fdisk. it'll do what you need. Zero Fill Utilities are a security measure for old HDD when they contained confidential information and are going to be discarded. In this case it isnt necessary as you are going to be re-writing the disc anyway.

[backburner]

Thanks guys. I'll do as you suggest with the boot disc.

bb

[GaryRouth]

backburner - do you have all the drivers handy for that Toshiba? Laptops generally have some proprietary drivers that you'll need for PC-cards, battery monitoring/power management, etc. Toshiba's Win95 generation models had something called 'TAP" Toshiba Access Panel.

If you don't have the drivers handy (on a disk, for example) - and you've already reformatted the hard drive, you can probably find some drivers at the Toshiba website.

With old laptops, I generally recommend manually cleaning up the old files, using Add/Remove to remove unused programs, manually deleting what didn't completely uninstall, and then a run of RegClean, (the MS Registry cleaner works well with Win95, and is free). If the OS is acting up, an "over the top" reinstall of Windows usually has decent results.

Either way you'll get there. Let us know if you need more help.
. . . Gary

[11290]

Interesting this thread --- I picked up and older AST laptop this weekend with Win95 and was just trying to reformat the drive and install Win98SE.

At dos I get C:\Windows and when I type C: I get an error message. Can't use fdisk or format C: on this one. When I use a Win98 bootdisk in A and type in fdisk nothing happens.

Was wondering how to format, myself.

[GaryRouth]

[11290] if Win95 is still functional on the AST, as McCartney & friends might say, "Let it Be". Most of the hard drives on those older laptops don't have the disk space to make Win98 a reasonable option, and upgrading the memory (if it's pre-PC100 sdram) is too expensive [Win98 needs a touch more memory to run quickly than Win95] . . . - - - If Win95 is no longer functional, when you boot from the Win98 floppy, see if you can switch to the RAM drive, and run fdisk from there.

Laptop reformatters R us
. . . Gary

[backburner]

I should start by confessing that I am only using bb's alias to post this, since I had trouble registering my own identity today....

Thanks for all the help. I wish I had read your suggestion to "let it be" earlier, Gary, but unfortunately I have already reformatted the C: drive. I found out too late that the autoexec.bat and config.sys files need to be reconfigured by hand to allow the Win95 cd to be read. Apparently, Win95 will not recognize the cd drive on it's own.

So now I'm stuck with a thoroughly cleaned HD, a copy of Win95 on CD and a startup disk that won't connect the two. When I went to install the cd drive from a dos utility on the startup disk, I was told to enter the following lines:

DEVICE=C:\CDDRV\TOSCDRAM.SYS
to the config.sys file , and

C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX /D:TOSCD001 /m:10
to the autoexec.bat file.

Before I attempt this, I thought I should learn a little dos, so I spent the day today reading through a tutorial. I don't know how much practical help it gave me though......

So, if anyone has any suggestions, I could really use them. Otherwise, I intend to start muddling my way through it tomorrow.

Thanks again for all of the suggestions!

Kays (bb's S.O.)

[Clover]

Do you have a floppy drive? Or are you running it from your CD rom?

Last time I did it, it wouldn't recognize my D: drive from dos, and stupid me formatted C: from C: I know, not the brightest thing.

I ended up with a totally useless computer until I bought an external floppy and loaded the CD rom driver from there.


Which btw, I still can't format from my CD drive. Makes no sense, but the computer won't recognize it while in Dos. Although it will recognize it from windows dos.

[catfishjoe_1]

Personal rules for systems I am unfamiliar with:
1)Make a system disk that is bootable, and has cd drivers/setup info.
2)At earliest poss time, clone or ghost the harddrive.

You now have first hand knowledge about the importance of backups.
I'll try to help as much as I can.
You will need to post the full model number and any pertinent info you can, what processor? what bios and version? A lot can be found from the bios set up utility.
cat

[GaryRouth]

Hi again

You'll need to add those DOS CD drivers to your bootdisk. Here's the link to the general Toshiba support site (enter the Portables section and proceed to your model) under Downloads. Lots of info over there.

Toshiba support: http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/t...su_sc_home.jsp

I'm guessing your model is probably one of the ones on the list at this link for Dos Cdrom drivers - the first link is the descriptive page, the second link is the download link:
http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/t...ngdglk.0&ct=DL
http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/cont...s/toscdrom.exe

(toshiba has to have the longest links in the world)
Best of luck
. . . Gary

[Clover]

I can't even figure out how to get in to my BIOS! No kidding, I know that sounds dumb, but I have hit every *F* key on the board, and nothing.

Thanks for the links.

[catfishjoe_1]

when you power it up what do you see? If it is a splash screen like win95 logo, hit "esc" . That will clear the splash and let you see what is going on on your screen. Somewhere there should be an option to enter setup. If you hit the "pause" key the pc will pause so you can read all the info. To unpause i believe you hit enter or pause, not sure on that one.
cat

[GaryRouth]

To enter Bios Setup on a Toshiba laptop, press and hold down the ESC key when first turning the computer on.

If you have the Toshiba floppy with it's handy-dandy utilities on it, you could boot to DOS and run tsetup.exe (which pretty much does the same thing as holding down the ESC key at startup).

Check out the info on that Toshiba site, it's pretty thorough. You absolutely need the Toshiba CDROM drivers added to your boot disk if you want to run setup from the CD.
. . . Gary

[racerbrownn]

i don't know what series you are working on, BUT the older ones [ie 460 series] needed to run a downloaded utility from toshiba installed to the hdd to allow access to the bios!

i'm suprised that we have this many posts on this problem and still don't know what model version and type. help us out a little more please.

[backburner]

Hi everyone,
Sorry about all the confusion.......the flu bug has been running amok in our household. The laptop ia a Toshiba Satellite Pro 440CDT with an external floppy and an internal cd rom. I'm not sure what progress Kays (my S.O.) has made with the laptop. We'll get back to you soon.

thankx,
bb

[racerbrownn]

tsetup.exe is the program that you run from dos on your 440cdt to change cmos/bios settings.
holding down the esc key on bootup should let you see the bios screen but i don't think you will be able to make any changes until you run this program in dos. [why did toshiba make a dos program to change bios settings if all you need to do is hit the esc key?] obviously, i haven't tried either even though i have a 460 cds-just haven't needed to so far.

link direct to the download page for ALL the drivers that you will need to restore setting on the hdd. [tsetup.exe is under toshiba bios/cmos setup program]

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/t...Model&x=14&y=5

garyrouth has done a good job so far! i just got lucky to have the model no. first.

[backburner]

Hey racerbrownn, thanks for the link! Like I posted earlier, the entire family was hit with the flu. Now that we're up and running, we'll see if we can get the laptop running too.

BB