That’s weird. I wonder if Windows has some way to make your OS installation so hardware specific that it won’t boot under a circumstance such as this to combat piracy?
Is there any way you could epoxy a clip of some sort to the motherboard or use a very small zip tie to hold the HDD connector in place or something like that?
I found this website for repairing and dissasembly of Toshiba laptops. Maybe you can find something specific to your model.
http://www.irisvista.com/tech/
J-B-Weld :-)
The tinkerer’s friend!
The computer will check the external and report that it has Windows Vista but it will not go any further, it justs stops with ‘this computer has no HDD and wants me to click OK to shut down. I try restarting even with the Toshiba repair wizard discs yet it will not do a full start using the USB. I am guessing the USB is to slow for the PXE ROM to communicate back and forth in coordination. It is quite frustrating, especially when the silly thing asks if I want to notify Microsoft of the problem booting up!