New Toshiba Satellite Laptop

[wei]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over
the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation
disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does
bother me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor
does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition
or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice
to quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others
out there do?

Xiexie

Wei

 

[George Anthony]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over
the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation
disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does
bother me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor
does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition
or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice
to quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others
out there do?

Xiexie

Wei

Look in your programs menu. There should be an option to make recovery
disks.

 

[GMAN]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over
the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation
disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does
bother me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor
does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition
or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice
to quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others
out there do?

Xiexie

Wei

There should be an app under programs that allows you to created your own
recover set using DVD-R's.

 

[Nil]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought
over the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an
installation disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on
it, but it does bother me that there was not at least a recovery
disk for it. Nor does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers
in its own partition or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the
needed drivers in a re-install, but maybe not.

You should ask the seller about this. I believe that Microsoft requires
OEMs to provide recovery disks or the ability to make your own. If you
truely don't have them, you have have been given a pirate copy of
Windows.

 

[Ed Cryer]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over
the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation
disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does
bother me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor
does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition
or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice
to quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others
out there do?

Xiexie

Wei

It should have the ex-factory set-up on a hidden recovery partition.
That's the standard these days for most OEMs. And they usually give you
an option to write the whole thing out to DVDs, after which the
partition is deleted (to avoid selling-on piracy).
This little video shows how to access the recovery mode;

If it's not there, then complain loudly.

Ed

 

[Paul]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over
the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation
disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does
bother me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor
does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition
or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice
to quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others
out there do?

Xiexie

Wei

Step one: Go to the store, and buy a six pack of blank DVDs.

Step two: Search for the menu item, that "makes recovery media".
Insert blank DVDs when requested.
On my laptop, this took four blank DVDs.
Windows 7 has built-in burner software for DVDs.

Note - you can only do Step two, one time. If you need
to make copies of the DVD, that process would be
done with separate tools. Once you've done Step two,
the computer will stop prompting you to make
recovery media.

Step three: Find System Image backup option in Windows 7. One
of the options there, is to make a "Recovery Console CD".
The CD is only 200MB in size, but you can use one of
your blank DVDs for this, too. You use the Recovery CD,
any time you need to restore the hard drive from an
external backup hard drive.

Normally, the laptop will pop up a dialog box, containing
helpful suggestions about "burning recovery media". The user
manual, might mention the procedure as well.

The four DVD set, can consist of three DVDs containing an "image"
of the OS (around 12GB perhaps). The fourth DVD can contain
a "driver disc".

The outside of the laptop should have a COA stick. The
Certificate Of Authenticity has a license key. Write
down the key, and keep the 25 character string in a safe place.
The sticker is not very robust, and the key can be wiped by friction.
Some laptops have the COA in the battery bay, to help protect it.

You can reinstall the OS, using an installer DVD downloaded
from the web, and then use that license key. I have not tried this,
and don't know any more details than that, for certain.

Windows 7 DVDs can be downloaded from digitalriver. Look for
file names such as X17-24209 and X17-24208 in your favorite
search engine. When you download such a DVD, it won't "work"
unless you have your license key.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Char Jackson]

It should have the ex-factory set-up on a hidden recovery partition.
That's the standard these days for most OEMs. And they usually give you
an option to write the whole thing out to DVDs, after which the
partition is deleted (to avoid selling-on piracy).

Which OEMs take the step of deleting the 'restore' partition after the
user has created the recovery disks? I haven't seen that before.

Also, how would that affect piracy?

 

[tigger]

wei writted thus:

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over the
web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation disk
for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does bother
me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor does the
hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition or
otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice to
quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others out
there do?

Xiexie

Wei

um, read the manual re making the system recovery disks?

 

[Char Jackson]

You should ask the seller about this. I believe that Microsoft requires
OEMs to provide recovery disks or the ability to make your own. If you
truely don't have them, you have have been given a pirate copy of
Windows.

Even pirated copies of Windows have the ability to burn a recovery
set. You don't get fewer features just because it's pirated. ;-)

 

[Jeff Layman]

Even pirated copies of Windows have the ability to burn a recovery
set. You don't get fewer features just because it's pirated. ;-)

Quite. You might even get a few extra "features" that you didn't
bargain on, and don't even know are installed. ;-)

 

[Char Jackson]

Quite. You might even get a few extra "features" that you didn't
bargain on, and don't even know are installed. ;-)

True. I once saw a copyright-challenged copy of XP that had a bunch of
Vista stuff bolted on.

 

[Jeff Layman]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over
the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation
disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does
bother me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor
does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition
or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice
to quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others
out there do?

Just get a free image backup program, buy an external USB 1Tb HD, and
make an image. Use the rest of the space on the HD for regular backups
- both image and data. You won't regret it. If you really want to be
safe, use a second hard disk, and alternate backups between the HDs.

Don't bother with anything else. Do you really want to "restore" your
laptop to it's purchase-day state when you've had it a couple of years?
That'll be a lot of good when you've lost all your data to a disk
failure or malware.

 

[Ken Blake]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over
the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation
disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does
bother me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor
does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition
or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice
to quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others
out there do?

Almost all OEM computers these days come with a recovery partition.
They also come with instructions on how to burn a DVD from that
partition, and that's what you should do ASAP.

 

[Nil]

Even pirated copies of Windows have the ability to burn a recovery
set. You don't get fewer features just because it's pirated. ;-)

Are you sure? I don't think that a conventional Windows 7 installation
has the ability to create installation or recovery disks like what's
usually supplied by the vendor. I don't mean burning a disk image, I
mean the ones that return it to factory-new condition (including all
their copious extra crapware.) Or am I mistaken?

I have a Toshiba Satellite (recently went tits-up, though - they have a
history of toasting to death internally after a few years) and it
included their own program to burn just one set of recovery disks. If
you lost that set, you had to buy a replacement set from Toshiba.

 

[Char Jackson]

Are you sure? I don't think that a conventional Windows 7 installation
has the ability to create installation or recovery disks like what's
usually supplied by the vendor. I don't mean burning a disk image, I
mean the ones that return it to factory-new condition (including all
their copious extra crapware.) Or am I mistaken?

Well, no, I'm not completely sure and to be honest, Windows piracy is
a bit outside of my area of competence. I would think, though, if you
were to stumble across a copy of a Toshiba (or Dell or HP or ?) image,
for example, it should contain the Start menu entry for creating the
restore discs. Obviously, the usual pirated stuff, the corporate
images, wouldn't be likely to have it. Then again, I don't know what
I'm talking about so feel free to correct me.

I have a Toshiba Satellite (recently went tits-up, though - they have a
history of toasting to death internally after a few years) and it
included their own program to burn just one set of recovery disks. If
you lost that set, you had to buy a replacement set from Toshiba.

When I got a new HP laptop last year, I burned a set of recovery disks
and saved a set of disc images on a hard drive. Now I can burn as many
sets of discs as I'd like, although to be honest they have very little
value to me. I typically make big changes as soon as I fire up a new
laptop, so I'm not likely to want to do a factory restore anytime
soon. I might if I were prepping it to be given away, but that's way
down the road, if ever.

 

[Dave-UK]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over
the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation
disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does
bother me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor
does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition
or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice
to quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others
out there do?

Xiexie

Wei

I'd buy an external usb disk, make an image via Backup and Restore
and burn a repair cd while you're there to restore the image.

 

[Ed Cryer]

Which OEMs take the step of deleting the 'restore' partition after the
user has created the recovery disks? I haven't seen that before.

Also, how would that affect piracy?

Let him thank God it's not an old Packard Bell iMedia. Not only did they
delete the restore partition after copying it to DVD, but when you
attempted to do a restore it insisted on the hard drive being "tattooed".
That caused more hair-tearing than a lot of things, because quite a
common situation requiring a restore was with a replaced hard drive
(especially a few years back when HD sizes were doubling every couple of
weeks).
So they emailed into the User Forums in their hundreds; and we had a
stock copy & paste response (later replaced by simply referring them to
previous threads) for them.

Ed

 

[Mellowed]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over
the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation
disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does
bother me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor
does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition
or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice
to quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others
out there do?

Xiexie

Wei

I also have the same laptop from Toshiba. I made the recovery disks and
it took 5 DVD's.

I believe that the Microsoft Win 7 DVD is not copy protected. If you
were to borrow one or even copy one you could use your Key Code on the
bottom of your laptop and be OK. I haven't personally tried that, but I
do know of a recent HP computer that the owner wanted a clean install
eliminating the junk HP files. The computer then operated as with a
very clean install.

 

[Rob]

I just started up a new Toshiba Satellite laptop that I bought over
the web. I am not surprised that it did not come with an installation
disk for the pre-installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it, but it does
bother me that there was not at least a recovery disk for it. Nor
does the hard drive seem to contain any drivers in its own partition
or otherwise. Now I guess W7 might have the needed drivers in a
re-install, but maybe not.

Anyway, If I have a failure, how am I to recover? Is my only choice
to quickly make and save off a backup image? What would you others
out there do?

Xiexie

Wei

You a troll as its all there on the HDD.

If your not sure look up the Toshiba site or phone the hot line.

 

[Wolf K]

Look in your programs menu. There should be an option to make recovery
disks.

This is a Window utility. Toshiba will likely have installed a repair
partition, most likely hidden. Also a repair/maintenance utility should
show on the taskbar. There will be some kind of user's manual on the HDD
also.

Data points: repair partitions and utilities are pretty well standard
for laptops, Acer and HP (for example) have included them for several
years now.

HTH.