Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Friday, August 26th, 2005
Shame on you Toshiba. You left me out in the cold, with nothing to write on but my pen and paper.

To my readers: The key take-away from this post is to make sure that you have "Original Setup CD-Rom" for your computer, not just the product recovery CDs.

Wednesday, I turned on my M4 to find this error message at boot-up:

20050823-M4TPCWindowsErrorAtDAC.jpg

I don't hold Toshiba (or Microsoft) responsible for the above system error. Those things happen - at least on PC's. :-) What I do hold Toshiba responsible for is not giving me a simple tool that I could have used to effect my own repair - the master Windows XP install disks for my system.  I know that you are not the only vendor to withhold the Master XP install CD's from their systems. I suspect that most do it and when questioned, will all point to Microsoft as the root problem. Perhaps that's true; but I'm your customer and I need to fix my system. I'm counting on you, my vendor, to equip me to succeed with your product.

Yesterday, when I received the error message, I was 100 miles from home; I had no choice but to switch from Tablet PC to legal tablet until I could return home to find my folder with all my Toshiba M4 information in it. I arrived home last night  with the goal of getting my M4 back on-line. I planned to insert the disk, repair the damaged file and get back to work. That's when I remembered that Toshiba does not provide the Master Windows XP installation CD with the M4. In fact, they don't provide any CD. Shame on you, Toshiba. Even my snow blower vendor gave me a backup set of keys with my purchase.

I don't know what marketing exec at Toshiba (or perhaps Microsoft) is patting himself on the back for saving $0.09 by not including the original product install CD with the M4,

Shame on you.

Toshiba, I hold you to blame - not for my windows problem, but for failing to equip me with the master install disk so that I could take care of my own problem. Toshiba, I'm your customer and I've given you over 3950 reasons why you should have provided me with the master XP install disk with my new M4 Tablet PC.  Help me help myself (and my clients) and I'll be a happy camper.

For those who are curious, I did create a set of system recovery disks as soon as I received the Tablet. I even booted up using System Recovery disks tonight to see if I could make the repair from the recovery disk. The only option provided is to restore my system to it's factory condition, complete with the Toshiba-provided spamware.  No thanks.

I wonder if the folks at Toshiba and Microsoft realize that when Windows XP says it needs the master install disk to repair a damaged file, it really needs the master install disks - not a system recovery CD?   If The Microsoft OS wants the original disk to do a proper file repair, then that's what I expect to be provided by the vendor. An excuse about OEM licenses won't cut it.

I can hear it now, Michael Sampson and Michael Hyatt are gonna say that I should have bought a Mac.

Perhaps. Still, I want to give the Tablet PC a good shot. I like the promise of the Tablet and I'm reasonably pleased with the M4 hardware.

Is Eric Mack just a whiner with his own blog? Perhaps. But my clients and even a few friends look to me for my experience and advice on Technology.  Tablet PCs are on their minds. I want to be able to point to my M4 and say, "Yeah, I like my Tablet PC as much if not more than I like my ThinkPad T42p; get the same tablet that I have."

My clients count on me to share my experiences with specific hardware and specific vendors. They want to benefit from my experience by buying (or not buying) products I've tested. For that reason, I'll keep testing.

This is one huge step away from my becoming YABHTU. Too bad,

Discussion/Comments (37):

Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Perhaps you need to get a copy of Ghost? I do a complete image backup of my Scribbler SC-3000 tablet every week using Ghost. I also use SyncToy to regularly back up my important data files. You may want to implement a similar procedure.

Posted at 08/26/2005 10:27:17 by Michael Connick


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Michael, I do have a complete Ghost of my M4 - it's something I do about once a month. My fallback option is to revert to a previous ghost image. I'd really rather avoid going backward when, if I had the right disk, I could move forward.

I will fix this problem, with or without assistance from Toshiba/Microsoft.

As far as synchronzing my work, I use Lotus Notes for everything in mail or databases, and I have Groove for files, so I'm covered there, too. I saw the SyncToy announcement, earlier this month. It's on my list to evaluate. Thanks.

Posted at 08/26/2005 10:43:14 by Eric Mack


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Eric said: I'd really rather avoid going backward when, if I had the right disk, I could move forward.

EXACTLY. There are any number of scenarios that you could use to get your backup closer to present (GHOST+Retrospect, for example). But the point is, you SHOULDN'T HAVE TO for just a missing OS (not application) file.

You purchased a license for the OS. You should have everything you need to run the OS and maintain it - you should have what someone who purchases the OS off the shelf has.

Even a way to extract the needed file off the system recovery CD you created would be better than what you have. Anything but to have to go back months - perhaps even years depending on when the failure happens. Imagine if you were three or four service packs down the road. :(

Eric, if you speak to Toshiba, let us know what they come back with.

Posted at 08/26/2005 11:32:13 by Walter


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Eric,

You are always far more the gentleman and nicer about this inexcusable practice that we all have to put up with. You can fix your situation. I have no doubt. I could fix mine. But, people should not have to become geeks in order to fix the inevitable problems that will occur.

I find the entire practice short sighted and just plain greedy. They deserve more than shame, they deserve out and out derision, especially given the fact that they refuse to acknowledge that this is a problem and keep passing the buck.

Posted at 08/26/2005 14:38:37 by Warner Crocker


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Having just dealt with a laptop in a similar state, I will refer you to:

"How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting"

{ Link }

Keep up the good work!

Posted at 08/26/2005 16:50:47 by Mark Rust


This technote is helpful, but ...

It wants the Windows XP Startup Disk. :-(

I hope that the person at Microsoft who deals with hardware manufactuers sees this as I do - totally frustrating.

I found a link to M'soft setup boot disks, but as one would expect, no support for Tablet OS. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994/

I know I can solve this problem by unconventional means. I just wanted to exhaust normal channels of support - the channels that my clients will have to use when the run into these problems.

Just calling it as I see it.

Eric

Posted at 08/26/2005 16:55:15 by Eric Mack


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

{ Link }

Posted at 08/27/2005 8:31:23 by James Kendrick


Great post...

can you keep us up on any response you receive from Toshiba?

Thanks

Posted at 08/27/2005 12:21:55 by Michael Parekh


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Not that I don't totally agree with you, but wouldn't a regular XP Pro CD help in the case? It fixed a problem with an XP Home installation.

I admit to some confusion when you say it wants the startup disk, but I've never seen a request for the floppies when one boots with the XP Pro CDI and I know I've had to recover from just such an issue at work recently.

Posted at 08/30/2005 11:39:13 by MiniMage


I will not buy from IBM again!

well, IBM also never provide me with the windows XP 'clean' installation disk. what they do 'steal' 4.7G partition from your harddrive and put an image of factory state (of course, loaded with IBM spamwares). So, shame on IBM and Thinkpad too?

Posted at 08/31/2005 8:35:28 by Anonymous


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

I'd also think you could boot off any XP Pro CD as a last resort. Normally when the registry has been corrupted you can then roll back to the last restore point by manually copying the restore point's registry files.

You're right though that this is a hack solution because installing over the OS from an original Tablet PC disc will usually correct a corrupted SYSTEM file without losing any of your most recent settings or data.

Having had XP wreck this same file a few times I think there is something seriously wrong inside XP.

Posted at 09/01/2005 11:09:34 by Ian


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

I had the same problem and have heard the same lame excuses. How often is this happening?

When I called Toshiba they acted like - hey I am the only guy in the world who ever had this problem...no one else has ever complained.

Posted at 09/03/2005 5:10:12 by larry loebig


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

i would also like to express my extreme displeasure with toshiba singapore when, upon opening my new laptop, i found tat it came WITHOUT a Windows XP CD. and when i tried to reinstall the bluetooth stack, the system told me to extract the file from the "recovery" CD. of course, i did, and guess wat? it nearly wiped off my hard disk!! indeed, shame on you, toshiba - AND Microsoft.

Posted at 11/29/2005 8:14:40 by someone from singapore


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

I'm going through this same garbage and did a search to see if there was a good solution anyone else knew about. I'm glad to see I'm not alone in this, but I sure do wish I could get my computer to work. I can't even get the recovery CD to work.

Funny, this is the second time I've owned a toshiba. The first one melted in a puddle of glory and was soon replaced by this one via a class action lawsuit.

Last night, the tech support told me that I had "bad luck" and to take it back to the vendor.

Posted at 12/06/2005 6:56:03 by Joseph


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Has anyone found a good way to put a fresh copy of xp tablet esition on a tablet? I too have just purchased the M4 and have no disks. Can I just use an old xp pro disk and download SP2...On the MS site it says that the tablet OS is installed with SP2 and that SP2 will know that u have a tablet and will install the tablet OS. Is this correct? Can I install from an XP pro CD and use SP2 to get the tablet utilities back? Also can I use the MS Licence number that was provided with the M4 with any XP PRO CD? One more question...How do I get Microsoft OneNote back? Is there a way to put it onto disk before I reformat? Great site Eric, Lots of good info in it.

Angel

Posted at 12/17/2005 23:09:33 by Angel


Stop your whining; go buy a non-oem version of windows

Instead of whining like a little girl get off your cheap a.. and go buy a non oem version of windows. If you were smart enough to read the liscense agreement you would have realised that oem does not provide you with any support and recovery cd's are just images. Maybe you would of thought twice about the purchase of the laptop without a full version of windows in your hands. Also it seems to me that you are quick to blame anybody you can without even thinking of your own faults, ie which is mentioned above! I can understand your frustation from the position you are in but this situation could of been preventable if you researched what you were going to buy before buying it and waiting for a problem to occur then blaming anyone in your sights except yourself because you cant fix it. Maybe this will teach you not to be a cheap ass and use a image as an os, ahahah

Posted at 01/11/2006 23:13:55 by th1&only


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

my pc is not working properly.window xp is corrupted.so what can you do for me.

Posted at 01/23/2006 6:51:27 by naresh anand


th1&only - buy non-OEM XP? brilliant advice

th1&only - tablets are preloaded with an image containing windows xp, with tablet extensions, and toshiba utilities.

it's reasonable, and not whining, to buy a pc, and expect to be able to recover from basic os software errors with what came in the box.

suggesting that people spend an extra $159 for a "real" XP CD which may help replace a file, but will _not_ contain the toshiba tablet OEM utilities, which some tablet PC's _need_, is pure freakin' genius. you are a son of a silly person and a donkey bottom wiper.

Posted at 02/08/2006 11:27:01 by foomanchew


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

I got a better one for you. I installed the Toshiba Bluetooth radio in my new Tecra M4. No Problems....except the Toshiba Bluetooth stack was not allowing me to DUN with my Palm Treo. So long story short... I want to use the MS Bluetooth stack... but my installation of XP is oblivious to the existence of an MS Bluetooth stack. So I decide that maybe if run the recovery DVD now that it has the Bluetooth radio installed I might have better luck (I realize now that it likely wouldn't change things, but I was getting desperate) So I run the damn recovery DVD and half way through the process it decides that it can't read the media! So I'm screwed! I call Toshiba and they can't even send me another recovery DVD! USELESS! I'm told I have to take it into an authorized service center now! I have somewhere else I'd like to put this useless p.o.s. --rrrggh!

Posted at 02/16/2006 1:22:10 by Tyler Durden


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

I decided to call Toshiba again and this time they tell me that they can send me a FREE DVD with recovery software on it, but that I have to pay for shipping. OF course, shipping is $40! They can't even tell me what's even on the DVD or why it costs so much for shipping. So I get the guy to escalate me to Customer Relations. I complain to that rep and they are going to send it to me for free(for real)....Part# ITAMA400092010. I can't wait to see what they send me. I doubt it is the holy grail known as XP Tablet PC Edition installation. But in 5-7 business days I will update you. At this point I will be happy if it's just that lame recovery DVD that my Tecra botched.

Posted at 02/16/2006 5:54:15 by Tyler Durden


Ouch! Toshiba alienates yet another Tecra customer

Tyler, I feel your pain.

It is amazing to me that a company that can make such a great tablet seems so willing to kill the customer's joy through shoddy tech support.

I could have sold many hundreds of Toshiba Laptops by recommending them to my clients. (I have actually sold many through my recommendations, however, I always include my personal experiences with Toshiba Tech Support and I ask my customers to carefully consider the pros and cons.)

I've had three minor problems with my Tecra M4 since day one (dust, fan, and squeal). Were it not for the challenges of dealing with Toshiba Tech support, I would have gladly let them fix it. After all, I did pay many hundreds of dollars for the various extended warranties and support services. Each post, like yours, makes me that much more concerned about whether I will end up better or worse for the experience.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I never intended that my personal blog would become a place for folks to post their Toshiba grievances, but if it helps, I'm happy to allow it. I frequently receive complaints about Toshiba Tech support via e-mail, too. The consensus seems to be that folks like the Tecra M4 (I know I do) but they feel mistreated by Toshiba Customer service.

Perhaps I'll send a link to this discussion thread to the VP of Toshiba Direct.

I wish you the best of success reloading. Please DO post the results of your experience.

Eric

Posted at 02/16/2006 8:16:43 by Eric Mack


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Maybe someone can help me here. I bought a used Toshiba Tecra M4 and I am trying to do a clean install but the system must be corrupted because it will not do it. I have called toshiba and since I am not the original owner they will not help me. Would anyone be willing to make a recovery cd for me?

Posted at 03/01/2006 20:51:31 by Troy Howard


Toshiba, how could you do this to me too?

(Posted to simplegeek review of Tecra M4 as well) ... thought this might be a better place...

I am extremely unhappy with my Tecra M4 Tablet PC. It has a nasty hardware issue and Toshiba is doing nothing but finger pointing to resolve the issue. I puchased mine in August of 2005, now it's March 2006 and I'm told I need to wait from 1 week to 2 months for parts. And I purchased Toshiba's "Service Express" 4 yr service agreement.

I purchased th high-end Toshiba Tecra M4 with 2.13 GHz processor, 128Mb Go6600 Graphics card, blue tooth + wifi, 80 Gig HDD and 2 GB RAM (Kinston, but was purchased from ToshibaDirect with the PC order) along with 3 docking stations (each at a different client's offices). The system just randomly locks up ... total freeze. Sometimes the screen goes blank, sometimes the cursor is frozen. I have to hard power off to get any response back (by holding the On/Off button for 5 seconds). One time all my open files in a Visual Studio 2003 project were filled totally with zeros after rebooting from a lock-up. The system even locks up when running memtest that was booted from a CD with a DOS OS on it, so it's not driver related or anything to do with things going wrong in the OS. Sometimes it blue screens (BSOD), usually after waking up from sleep mode. Other's it just freezes up (not 100% CPU condition either, just a total lockup).

I have purchased the topmost service agreement directly from Toshiba which is supposed to get me a repair within 48 hours (Service Express). Toshiba directed me (after repeated calls with this issue) to a local Toshiba Authorized Service center. The technician there has confirmed the system locks up while he was running memory diagnostics (again running via DOS), but never sees a memory error, just a system freeze. He has placed on order a replacement system board for this Tecra M4, but he says that it's on "back-order" and may take anywhere from 1 week to 2 months to get. Not exactly what I call Service Express.

So I called Toshiba "Customer Relations" (Kim, at 1.866.810.2791 Option 1) who begins yelling at me on the phone that there's nothing that Toshiba can do, and begins explaining to me that it's up to the individual service shops which parts they stock and it's totally out of Toshiba's control. I gave her the part order number, and she calls me back the next day to say there is no way to trace that order number and either get the part shipment expedited nor get an ETA. She explains that the part comes from overseas (China or Japan) and that's why it takes so long.

Since this PC was locking up from the first day I purchased it (it happens randomly ... sometimes it runs for 3 days with no problem, sometimes it locks up 3 times in one day), I basically sent several thousand dollars to Toshiba and in return they sent me a defective Tecra M4. They will not replace the machine, they can not get it repaired quickly, the parts are on back order and the Customer Relations person, named Kim (she would not share her full name) is yelling at me on the phone (litterally ... I had to move the phone severa inches away from my ear) how Toshiba works and that there is no one else higher up at Toshiba I can talk to (she says she's it), that I need to deal solely with the service center. The service center says the part is on back-order and their is no way they can get an estimate on when the part may arrive.

It's a great machine overall ... I actually love it ... when it works. But I now hate Toshiba on how they are handling my case. Your's will probably work as I don't see others reporting on the web about a lockup / freeze-up issue. But if you have an issue with your M4, beware.

I've also used some cool software "Notebook Hardware Control" to monitor my Tera M4's internal operating temperatures, and they are not even getting close to overheating. I'm not running games, just using this to run my business ... which is programming custom software using MS .NET.

Roy Ogborn, Sr. Software Architect

Orbonyx Corp.

Posted at 03/02/2006 10:42:10 by Roy Ogborn


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Eric (and everyone else in the comment section who's tangling with Toshiba), I commisserate.

Let me tell you, the problem is endemic across several divisions of the company. Toshiba of Canada Ltd. is just as bad.

You're freakin' lucky if you can even get an authorized service center to pick up the %$&# phone! Your experiences are with the M4.

Mine's with their M10 Satellite Pro notebook with XP Pro on it. Toshiba doesn't provide a setup disk with it either. Quelle surprise!

My problems started with a defective HDD (Toshiba brand no less; as a part it has a 3 year warranty on it; as part of a system: 1 year [go figure]). Apparently, it was drawing far too much power and caused a motherboard problem (so bad it wouldn't recognize any HDD).

Put it in to a service center. They said it was the HDD and wanted to charge me $307 for a new 60 GB drive + $85 labour. I already had the exact same drive for $129. I didn't approve the estimate for repair.

After the install of the new drive, the notebook still came up IDE #0 ERROR.

The UNauthorized service centre shipped it off to an expert who was familiar with solder issues with motherboards (they're blow-soldered and sometimes the quality of the solder job is poor). The extra drawing on power did something to the solder (probably produced too much heat causing it to soften and a conection worked loose).

The board was resoldered where needed. A new motherboard would have run me about $645 or more from a Toshiba service center. Cost of repair: $210 + a 90 day warranty on the work.

Now, my notebook is NOT a kid's machine. It's a business machine. Fortunately, it gets backed up; however, because of the sudden failure, very recent work was not in any backup set -- and it is valuable for my livelihood.

I have weekly and daily incremental backups, thank St. Vidicon of Cathode (a Christopher Stasheff reference proving my terminal geekness). With the exception of some secured files and the absolute up to the minute e-mail, I recovered in about a week.

And yes, my notebook is back, with a brand new drive, and working as well as it did when I bought it.

When Roy Ogborn said, "Now I hate Toshiba on how they handled my case ...." I empathize. Tech Support was nearly useless. Customer Relationship Management was crappy to say the least.

I'll go on to add to Roy's comments: If you have any issues at all about any Toshiba computing product, beware. Toshiba doesn't stand behind its products and my experience with three authorized service centers was distasteful (when your principal system is down, you can't book a service call on the Web you morons! Your only recourse is to use the phone! Which you don't $#%&ing well bother to answer .... or return calls ... or fax estimates.)

Why do I hold Toshiba responsible for the awful service experience at the authorized service centres? Who do you think "authorizes" them to represent the brand? They set the terms and conditions. A minimumly acceptable level of quality rendering service isn't unreasonable and prevents the brand from being brought into disrepute.

So much for the much-lauded commitment to quality by a Japanese company. I'm sure Demming would turn his back on them. In my opinion, Toshiba has seriously lost face.

OEM agreements with Microsoft be damned. Without the OEM companies, Microsoft would not have the market penetration they do. All it takes is the OEMs to say to MS, "We want the XP setup disks out to customers too." What's Microsoft going to do? Say, "No"? They'll relent because the OEMs won't load an O/S that requires the disk for repair operations.

After hellish experiences with Dell and now Toshiba, I can say, unequivocally, I will do my utmost to avoid buying a (multi-) national brand again.

I have a local place that will custom build with brand-name parts on the Win HCL anyway I like. I'll take it! At least if they go toes-up or something breaks, I have a relationship with the system builder.

Now, that may not work with a Tablet or notebook PC ... but I refuse to hand another dime to a multinational tech company for a desktop ever again. Parts yes. Parts are cheap. It breaks, you can buy it off the shelf (hopefully) and install it yourself or get the builder to do it.

And he or she won't try to gouge me 2.3 times the cost of the parts on the open market.

To the M4 Tablet owners: I wish you the best of luck. May St. Vidicon smile on them and keep the Imp of the Perverse away from them.

Like Roy, I too absolutely hate Toshiba for the experience I've been through (a hate previously exclusively reserved for Dell). Like him, I too run my business on my system. My notebook gave me unprecedented freedom over a desktop. Now I have both again (and I have even stronger backup systems in place).

Both companies have completely destroyed any faith I have in the multi-national Medusa style manufacturers. I expect every single one of them to be exactly the same.

May their Customer Relationship Management department and systems rot in Hell. (Don't get me started on CRM. People create and maintain relationships, not computers).

V. "Len" Giberson, Applications Architect (Egghead to my clients)

Synergy Business Services

Posted at 03/02/2006 14:42:14 by Len


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Well, Roy, I have the same freezing problem with a brand new Tecra S3 bought in the US. Since I am now based in Ukraine, I had to pay for the delivery and custom fees of a new motherboard from the US. Yet the new board and reinstallation of the system didn't solve the problem, although it freezes less often. The Toshiba service center here just doesn't know what to do anymore, and so do I...

Posted at 03/10/2006 1:09:38 by Nicolas


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

So today, one month and a day from when I first brought my system in for "Service Express" repair service the new system board arrived from back-order and was installed by my local friendly Authorized Toshiba Repair center (and, indeed, they were friendly).

I don't have a "sure fire" way to make the system fail, so I won't know for a few days if the issue is actually fixed ... or not. (So stay tuned Nicolas ... I'll let you know).

On another issue, I had purchased a new Seagate 120 GB Serial ATA internal HDD for my Tecra M4 (for more room and in case the service center insisted that they reset the original HDD to factory installation ... which they did not).

But a new wrinkle, the Seagate drive causes the Tecra M4 to blue screen on resume from stand-by (sleep mode)! In fact I did install to the Seagate SATA 2.5" HDD the Toshiba recovery CD (after resume failed on my "production" image), and it still did the same thing. In fact, on the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), the screen says it's writing a system dump file, but what really happens is the HDD light stays on solid forever (no flicker) and no dump file ever gets written.

This happened on the old system board and on the new system board. So now I'm working with Seagate to solve the HDD problem.

Interestingly, resume from hibernate works fine using the Seagate drive. (The stock drive in the Tecra is a Fujitsu 80 MB Serial ATA 2.5" drive, and it does not exibit the standby-resume issue.)

I only posted this in case others are running into the same thing on their Tecra M4 after upgrading to a larger HDD, but haven't yet figured out what's causing it. (And those new 160 GB notebook Seagate drives will be looking quite compelling).

If it's not one thing, it's another. I'll post how this one plays out as well ... if you're interested.

Roy

Posted at 03/13/2006 17:49:44 by Roy Ogborn


120 Gig upgrade for M4

A big thank you to Roy and everyone else who has taken the time to share their experiences. I too, have upgraded my internal M4 hard drive to the 120 gig seagate, using a disk drive cloning device. I;ve not encountered the problems that Roy has described. My biggest issues are fan noise (grinding), squaling from my screen when on AC power, a nonfunctioning SD Card slot, and dust under my screen. These problems first appeared within a month or so of ownership. Otherwise, I really like the M4 and the large high resolution screen.

Posted at 03/15/2006 11:48:07 by Eric Mack


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

I had posted too soon! Within a few hours of getting my Tecra M4 back from service with the new system board (which I had to wait a full month for), the system froze again. And twice the next day.

So, back in the shop it went. This time they replaced the 2 GB RAM with new RAM. I had purchased the RAM from ToshibaDirect on the same order as my Tecra M4. That RAM was from Kingston Memory and was manufactured in South Korea. The replacement RAM was also from Kingston, but manufactured in the US.

So far so good. No more system freeze to date! So it's sure looking like a memory issue all along. Strange that the system would freeze while running on either of the two 1 GB memory sticks alone (as well as together). (We ruled out a Windows OS or driver issue early on since the system would freeze sometimes while running Memtest86 which boots the system on DOS from a CD).

As far as my issue with the Seagate 120 GB SATA drive ... I mentioned to Seagate that Eric Mack had the same drive (thanks for posting that!), so I know it should work in this machine. So Seagate is going to replace the drive after I send this one back to them

But they'll only replace it with a factory refurbished (read "used") HDD. Nice. I pay for a brand new drive, I get a defective one, I then spend hours helping them diagnose the problem, then they'll only replace it with a used one. ARGH!

Roy

Posted at 03/27/2006 9:20:02 by Roy Ogborn


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

th1&only you have paid for a copy of Windows with the laptop and are therefore entitled to a disc containing Windows. When I buy an OEM copy with a desktop machine I get a Windows disc, not some stupid, useless recovery disc.

I'm lucky, I have access to a disc containing the Tablet PC version of XP, but most do not.

Posted at 04/02/2006 5:41:58 by Dave


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Update on my Tecra M4 Suspend/Resume problem with the Seagate 120 GB Serial ATA (SATA) HDD...

I finally got the replacement HDD from Seagate ... (took over a month and several phone calls from when they received mine, and the replacement arrived). The new 120 GB Serial ATA works fine in my Tecra M4 now and suspend/resume no longer blue screens (BSOD) on me. So it was a problem with the original new Seagate Hard Disk Drive, and not an issue with the Tablet PC (thank goodness).

My opinion on Toshiba at this point is that they make darned good products ... but they sure do need some lessons on how to do customer support.

Roy

Posted at 05/18/2006 10:57:01 by Roy Ogborn


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

I recently bought a new motherboard and graphics card to upgrade my PC from AGP to PCI-e. I have had no problem in updating in the past, but this time when i try to boot the computer after installing the pair it tells me that it needs to reinstall windows so i try to use the recovery disks that originally came with the HP PC that i bought 2 years ago (now none of the orginal components are in except the gard drive) only to find that that does not work because of some unknown reason, and as I have no XP CD because HP are naff I can go nowhere.

So I persistenly try to contact HP to get a copy of the Windows XP CD that my computer should have seeing as I ahve paid for it. So I send an email to them and one customer support sections bounces me to another and i just cannot get through to anyone. I finally resorted to buying an OEM XP CD from a computer shop near me for £40. Unfortunatley this was the only way for me to reinstall windows. Thank god for Linux.

Posted at 05/27/2006 7:01:51 by Michael


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

I had a fatal crash as well, tried installing XP Home with a normal XP install CD, not happening. I tried using the Key on the back of the machine and it won't work because my cd is not an OEM Toshiba CD. You cannot currently buy XP any more just alone, its been replaced with Vista. You have to buy XP Home or Pro installed on a computer by a licensed Microsoft dealer. Lovely. I'm still trying to figure out how to fix this problem, its been 2 days now.

Posted at 08/30/2007 7:15:59 by gtbike51


hp compac tablet pc recovery

I read you comments on the problems with the OS recovery system for the Tablet PC. I tried to recover two of my systems recently and was unable to get them to reboot after a successful recovery. Now I don't know what to do. This whole process has taken me weeks. Since I have 7 systems for my office I am conerned.

Posted at 01/03/2008 15:10:20 by matt


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

why don't you provide cd as others companies provide we have to reinstall our windows what is the alternative to set all drivers,vcl etc.

Posted at 12/21/2008 10:17:36 by archana chauhan


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

Do you know a very nice application <a href="{ Link } ">Advanced Outlook Express Repair</a>. It is a powerful tool to recover messages, folders and other objects from corrupt or damaged Microsoft Outlook dbx files.

Posted at 04/29/2009 4:31:58 by zwr


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

My opinion on Toshiba at this point is that they make darned good products ... but they sure do need some lessons on how to do customer support.

Posted at 06/03/2010 2:51:32 by Mädchen spiele


Toshiba, how could you do this to me?

uuhuhuhu..

evrytime I plug in my adapter..my laptop will hang.and it will pixelate or sumtyms it will turn just black...that is why i'am just using the SAFE MODE>>>>huuh..I cant even watch news...or listen to music...how could this be????

if you have some suggestions how to fix it..pls..help me...

Posted at 08/29/2010 10:09:43 by ivan



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