*mumbles* snagafragi..gdgshsgdhsjakshdghdyehdhdyelsn
Posted on 09/05/2012 9:02:46 AM PDT by GeronL
My Toshiba Satellite L305 has crapped out. It did not come with the reinstallation disk. I can get a new hard drive but I need an O/S. It is too old to run Windows 7, which I can't really afford.
Does anyone know where I can buy a Windows Vista Home Premium (or sumtin') disk or product key for a good price?
So Geek Squad is a bunch of retards or something?
I bet they won’t even switch out the HDD for free. This is insane.
*mumbles* snagafragi..gdgshsgdhsjakshdghdyehdhdyelsn
Geek Squad is a bunch of retards in my opinion. However, I can’t complain because they generate much income for me - when I go fix their screwups on my (new) clients’ machines.
Neither 5400 or 7200 will come close to saturating a SATA 1 bus, not in a laptop drive. An SSD can, but not rotating media.
if they switch it out for the 250gb/5400rpm then it should work right?
Possibly, possibly not. Did you get your recovery disks from Toshiba already? I have one here we can test it with if you want just to see if it will work.
I am still trying to figure out HOW to ask for the recovery disks and I ain’t paying $50 for it if I can help it. Maybe there is a way around that?
You can call Toshiba support and ask for the disks, but they will be charging you for it.
However, if your original isn’t boned totally, the original drives has a recovery partition on it. If that’s intact I can clone it to the new drive and you’ll be back up and running in short order.
That sounds pretty cool. Let me think about it for a day. :p
I didn’t realize my laptop was so old, ancient in technology terms. lol. Less than 3 years.
Yes, I just went through the ordering form as if I were buying the recovery discs (apparently the L-300’s are all pretty similar) and its something like $29.95 (probably not including S/H)
Ah, hell naw! They can download and catalog any pr0n on your puter and install crapware you don't want and then charge you for it, all in like 15 minutes! (No this is not from personal experience -- I wouldn't let one of those virus-infested fools within 50 feet of my computer.
The National Association of Retards called and they're going to sue you unless you retract that!
Wait, how is the system going to know and why would it care what rpm the HDD is?
They're meant to provide technical excuses to sell you new computers. As a result, they do not know what they are doing most of the time.
I wouldn't let a GS anywhere near my machines.
So, how do I format the clean HDD with a live disc? Should I let someone else do it?
Should I just install Puppy Linux until I get something better? I have Ubuntu on a USB but I guess I don’t know how to make it bootable.
“Wait, how is the system going to know and why would it care what rpm the HDD is?”
That’s actually 2 questions, general & specific.
The user installing the correct RPM HD is important so that files are read correctly. Street signs meant for reading at 35 mph are much harder or impossible to read at 95 mph, LOL.
The Bios has to have the device specs in order operate the device correctly and to pass info to the OS, so those specs are either auto detected on boot (from info passed by the device) or the specs are manually entered (old style, lol) into the bios by the user when a new device is installed. The Bios needs # of sectors and cylinders of the HD in order to determine its size. It may or may not get RPM speed, but the MB can’t manage the HD correctly if the HD spins too fast for the chipset &/or bus to handle.
If the HD RPM is too fast, then the bios can not auto-detect correctly and no user entered specs would be correct.
This problem occurred on older MBs having ATA/IDE buses for drives instead of SATA. SATA has ability to run either 5400 or 7200 RPM drives. The difference is the bus change from parallel to serial and vast improvement in data transfer speed.
Check the bios for a choice to enable USB keyboard detection and turn it on.
The bios does not activate or assign interupts to USB ports on boot and leaves management of these to the OS. However, when USB keyboards were introduced, then a choice to turn on USB was provided in the bios.
Turning that on should allow your USB drive to be recognized. Then, you need to have a bootable USB drive with an OS to boot the system.
If I have the ISO on a USB, how do I make it bootable? Do I have to rename it BOOT or something?
lol
Is that an external HD connected to USB port or is it a USB flash drive?
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