Seems like this is a common theme, however, as there doesn't seem to be a thread with my exact problem, I'll start a new one.

My M200 stopped, so we tried to reboot, given that it's a Freecom USB CD, you'll know that I didn't get very far. It was turned over to our hardware guys, who tested it, ensured the hardware was fine.

I'm not quite sure what they did - but it now has regular XP on it, but we can't get the tablet version installed, given that we can't boot from the Freecom CD.

I've read a few hints on here & other sites, such as the idea of booting over a network, which the techhy will try when he gets the new image server up and running.

Is that what most folks have ended up doing, if they have access to a server, and no Toshiba CD? I assume there isn't a way of getting the relevant drivers onto a Floppy and/ or USB memory and/ or Sd card, so that you can get it to get whatever from the external CD? (I'm not a hardware person :()

Hi Emma

I am new here. I am considering buying a Toshiba 200 M, and i am confused about this issue of rebooting from CD ROM drive. I currently use a Toshiba Sattelite 2610 CDT on Windows 98 SE; whenever i have to reboot it, as i have had to do a couple of times every day for three years now, i give it "the threefinger salute" (CTRL-ALT-DELETE), and then i will sometimes reboot, if it doesnt, i have to pull the plug and start it again, but i have never had to use a CD ROM to reboot it, why is that neccesary with the Toshiba 200 M?
I come from Denmark and live in Norway, and i called a Toshiba dealer in Copenhagen, as i am on vacation in Denmark at the monent, and he assured me that i did not need the Windows CD ROM to install Window XP Proffesional Tablet Version on the machine, and that when reinstall time came, i could do it from something called a "hidden partition" on the machine. How did the regular XP end up on on your computer? Does M200 come with the regular version, on top of which one then has to install the tablet one? As you perhaps can guess, i am not a hardware person either, and i am totally confused. One thing i am at complete loss about is; why does one of the most expensive pc`s in production NOT have a CD ROM drive?

Hi Hans
I didn't explain as carefully as I might. I meant rebooting from the CD, when the install of XP was sufficiently messed up that I needed to reformat & reinstall the OS.

It comes with 3 CDs, and in order to recover to the factory state, you have to be able to reboot from them, which the external CD that I have won't let you. Given that there are 3CDs, I suspect that XP tablet is on them, rather than a hidden partition - as in my experience the recovery discs that have just the wherewithall to get to the hidden partition can do it in 1 CD, not 3.

(The drivers aren't on there - they are a separate CD, as is one note).

I've since got a bit further. The hardware guys where I work have got XP working on it - they were able to install that with the external CD that we have. It's also possible to reinstall over a network, and as one of the software techhies is setting up an imaging server for a lot of standard builds, he's going to put it on there, so we are hoping that we can use that. Otherwise work are going to have to buy a Toshiba drive, as we have about 5 or 6 of these round the department.

To your question "why don't they include it" - no idea! Including it would of course push up the price, however, given that they don't make it easy should you need to reinstall, then it just makes you annoyed (and likely to suggest to work that next time we need tablets, we think very carefully about which ones to get).

I have an idea that the M205 includes one.

Linuxmon also suggested an external CD caddy, which seems to work - (in this thread ), though I can't seem to find a UK supplier (mind you, $34 is a lot less than £200 - and we have enough space internal CDs lurking at work!)

Hi Emma

Thank you for clarifying these things. I am a litle embarrassed; i realize that it was probably silly of me to think that the simple restart would require the machine to start from a CD, but the strangest thing happen in the computer world, and personally i would not have believed it if someone had told me that Toshiba would make a top model that did not have a built-in CD drive..*smiles* About rebooting from a network- i was wondering, does that not require that the machine be functional? I mean, how can you connect to a network if you have the dear old blue screen?
By the way, thank you to you and the staff here for the friendly wellcome, i am looking forward to learning a lot about tablet pc`s from this forum- i really need something like a tablet pc in my work, i study geology, and anything that can facilitate notetaking and presentations is vital in my situation.

Sincerely Hans Christian

Hi Hans
I know what you mean about the need ot have something working to boot from a network ... however, it says that you can - and others have. Guess it has the right bits in the Bios so that you can. I know that the network is part of the boot sequence, so I guess in the same way that it has the ability to boot from a CD (unlike older PCs that you could only boot from a floppy, load the CD drivers, then install the OS), so I guess now bios can store enough info to install the OS from the Network.

I'm not sure how you do it - just hoping that the software guys can do it for me :)

Emma

:) Hi Emma

Okay, i see, yes that seems logical, so the rescue floppy disk that came with Windows 98 is actually a sort of relict from those days, for the people who still had that kind of computer at that time. I allways wondered why they included that. In "Delete/add programs" on Win 98 you can create a rescue floppy disk, i dont know if you can still do that on XP.

First up, I think there is a BIOS patch on the Toshiba support site that will let you boot from any USB 2 compliant drive. I could be wrong there, but if that really is the case then you can easily boot from the recovery CD's and start from scratch.

The only other alternatives I can think of would be to investigating booting off an ipod (yes it can be done), booting off a USB keychain, booting of a 1gig SD card, or network booting. You can tell the computer too boot off any of those devices by hitting F12 when the tosh logo appears and choosing the boot device, but for how you would go about building a boot image I'm afraid you will have to hunt around on the net for that one.

Good luck

Hi Froogle

Thank you very much. So what you say is; get the BIOS patch from the Toshiba site, install it, and the reboot from any kind of CD drive? You say something about a USB keychain... i dont mean to be sarcastic, but do you seriously suggest sticking one of those silly litle dinguses in a 18000 Norwegian Kroner machine and rebooting the system from that? I mean the keything is supposed to be the replacement for floppy disks, and i understand that in the old days you had to perform a reinstall with a rescue floppy, this seems to be a step back in time.. :)

Yeah, like I said though I could be wrong on the BIOS patch allowing any CD, but it's worth a look.

On the keychain thing...absolutely. If I get some time this week I'll take a look at what's involved in building a bootable one, but the theory is sound- you just need to get one big enough to fit Windows on. If people can run Linux off them, I'm sure we can boot Windows from one ;)