I have had the same problem. I tried a new hard drive but that didn't work. I found the recovery discs I had were faulty and got new ones from Toshiba (took about a week). Connect the CD drive with the first disc installed and power on, hold the "C" key down and it should look to the CD drive to boot up. You can also watch for the "Toshiba" screen which has a line of icons across the bottom (I think they represent *network *CD drive *floppy drive and some others) and you can press the right or left arrow keys and see an indicator under each icon move from one to the next, stop under the CD drive.
I was told by a BestBuy Geek squad tech that it could easily be a motherboard error and it's not worth repairing as those parts are more than a new laptop. I did get a blue-screen error message the first time I tried the new recovery discs, but the second time worked. When you're successful the system will be back in 2003 (or whatever year the computer was sold) and you'll have to download updates from Toshiba and from MS Windows. As I'd run the recovery-and-update several times I found that updating Windows XP beyond Service Pak 2 gave me more errors, when I stopped with SP2 it runs OK.
It's a great machine but age catches up.
How can i reformat my toshiba laptop with out cd rom
Hi
You can obtain the Recovery disk from Toshiba. Toshiba hotline number 1-800-457-7777 (US)
0844 800 6020 (UK). You need to provide your computer's part number correct to get the matching recovery disk. Usually they charges $39.95 including shipping to your address in US. Alternately you can go to http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/cgi-bin/ToshibaCSG/generic_content.jsp?service=UK&ID=Support_Homepage_uk
Good Luck
1,300 views
Usually answered in minutes!
I bought a toshiba 3500 used from someone without a disc, and now it has completely crashed. I can't find windows xp on the market anywhere and all I have is my original windows xp disc. When I boot the tablet up, it says, "A disk error occurred," "Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart." When you do that, it says the same thing over. I have the external cd rom, and I can't even get the xp set up to start. I need to reformat the hard drive. How?
×