Is Toshiba laptop worthy of repair?

[emmline]

I have one more point: PCs spend half your life downloading and/or installing updates with about an 85% success rate.

[s1m0n]

Often, what the recovery disk reinstalls from is files contained in a hidden partition on the hard drive itself. This won't work if that drive is pooched.

[emmline]

Yeah, but it's a new hard drive. Which I probably botched up all by myself. It (the replacement one) had Windows 7 Ultimate on it, but with no wireless driver in evidence. So I decided to use the recovery disks and reinstall the Windows 7 Home Premium he had originally. Which means of course that now I have nuthin', except for a permanent "rating system something or other" endless loop. Well, the kid will have something to use, and I'll have my friend diagnose the laptop later.

[s1m0n]

Can you get to system restore? Try rebooting while holding down F8 to get to the boot menu. You should be able to start system restore from a command line before it begins loading windows. That might let you reverse the latest change.

[emmline]

I will try that.

[emmline]

Things are more or less working, I think, except for the following message which pops up at each restart and login:
Cannot find C:WINDOWSSysWOW64SYSPREPHide cmd.exe

I can dismiss this window, and the computer appears to be working, although I have not yet installed Kaspersky, MS Office, etc, because I don't know if this message suggests further problems with the system for which a reinstall from a factory-issued copy of Windows 7 would be recommended.

The only thing I can Google up about that particular message is that it seems to be a problem that specifically occurs with reinstalling on Toshibas from the homemade recovery dvds.

[Denny]

while we's waiting fer someone with a clue....

http://forums.dameware.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2358

All you should have to do to resolve this behavior is to manually create the dwrcs folder on your local machine under your Windows Installation folder. For example: C:\Windows\dwrcs.

[emmline]

Well, anyway, it turns out the Toshiba ships factory made recovery disks to holders of real serial numbers for the excellent "shipping" rate of $24.95. Still, I consider this a cheap solution since I got the new hard drive free.

[Charlene]

Well, anyway, it turns out the Toshiba ships factory made recovery disks to holders of real serial numbers for the excellent "shipping" rate of $24.95. Still, I consider this a cheap solution since I got the new hard drive free.

That's what my daughter had to do since we hadn't made backup disks. The first time her hard drive fried it was still under warranty, so it was just the cost of the disks. This year the hard drive wasn't under warranty so we had to pay for the new drive. I just bought her an external hard drive that automatically backs up every time it's plugged in so hopefully it will be easier to recover her files next time. If she remembers to plug in the external drive every time she makes important changes, that is.

If I ever get a laptop for myself it will NOT be a Toshiba.

[mutepointe]

The downfall of saying, "The next time I need to buy a (insert computer hardware), I won't buy a (insert brand name) is that I'm going to run out of all-in-one printer companies shortly.

[Charlene]

The downfall of saying, "The next time I need to buy a (insert computer hardware), I won't buy a (insert brand name) is that I'm going to run out of all-in-one printer companies shortly.

That's like saying one is never going to shop at a certain store ever again -- pretty soon there's no stores left.

But I think there's a lot of laptop makers to choose from before I get to that point.

[I.D.10-t]

For me it is the opposite. I say "I really like these guys, I'm going to buy from them!" and a week later they go out of buisness/burn down/discontinue a product, etc.

[Mockingbird]

I did not care for my Toshiba laptop. Luckily, my hubby's a whiz at PC repair/upgrade. Even more luckily, one of my kids solved the whole thing by yanking it off the desk and shattering the screen.

The used Dell we got cheaper-than-cheap from a college IT dept. is working well.

[s1m0n]

Things are more or less working, I think, except for the following message which pops up at each restart and login:
Cannot find C:WINDOWSSysWOW64SYSPREPHide cmd.exe

I can dismiss this window, and the computer appears to be working, although I have not yet installed Kaspersky, MS Office, etc, because I don't know if this message suggests further problems with the system for which a reinstall from a factory-issued copy of Windows 7 would be recommended.

The only thing I can Google up about that particular message is that it seems to be a problem that specifically occurs with reinstalling on Toshibas from the homemade recovery dvds.

Google the file name and see if you can find a downloadable copy on line, and if so stick it in the location it's asking for. If you can't find a copy, give an empty text file that name and see if that shuts up the error. Make sure that you have unchecked the 'hide extensions of known file types' box on the view tab found in windows explorer / tools / folder options / view first, or it'll tack an extra .txt onto the filename you've just made. This might or might not shut up the annoying error message. If it doesn't or if it gets even more confused, delete it.

[Denny]

it's a 32 from 64 issue, ya need to create a folder named "dwrcs" in the windoz folder.