[fred2028]

Is it possible to reinstall Windows XP Home edition with the recovery DVD that Toshiba shipped with my laptop?

[Rich-M]

Most likely if your laptop has a dvd player...but you need to check that the bios is set to boot to dvd player or rw before hard drive is all.

[fred2028]

Originally Posted by Rich-M

Most likely if your laptop has a dvd player...but you need to check that the bios is set to boot to dvd player or rw before hard drive is all.

It does, but whenever I try it it says "Loading RAMDISK Image", and then reboots without any changes to my system. It's as if The DVD did nothing to the laptop.

[ozrom1e]

You have Service Pack 2 installed and that makes it a new operating system and most likely the original recovery disk senses this and will not function properly and install. I would think that the computer would generate an error message and tell you this but apparently it is not. If you have your data on the hard drive backed up I would suggest using a Windows XP install disk that has SP 2 on it to format the hard drive then re-run the correct recovery disk for the computer.

[Rich-M]

Originally Posted by fred2028

It does, but whenever I try it it says "Loading RAMDISK Image", and then reboots without any changes to my system. It's as if The DVD did nothing to the laptop.

Did you set the bios to boot to it?

[fred2028]

Originally Posted by ozrom1e

You have Service Pack 2 installed and that makes it a new operating system and most likely the original recovery disk senses this and will not function properly and install. I would think that the computer would generate an error message and tell you this but apparently it is not. If you have your data on the hard drive backed up I would suggest using a Windows XP install disk that has SP 2 on it to format the hard drive then re-run the correct recovery disk for the computer.

My laptop came with SP2 ..., so shouldn't the recovery disc include SP2 also?

[fred2028]

Originally Posted by Rich-M

Did you set the bios to boot to it?

Yes, I set BIOS to boot CD/DVD.

[Rich-M]

Originally Posted by fred2028

My laptop came with SP2 ..., so shouldn't the recovery disc include SP2 also?

Yes it should...might be time to call Toshiba and get a plan here as this makes no sense.

[fred1999]

Hi.

I don't know if you're still having this problem, but I had the exact same problem and found out what was the problem.

It seems the DVD doesn't like it if you have a space in the hard drive's label. I had called it "Hard Disk C" and when I renamed it to "HardDiskC", it worked. I rebooted and then I was able to reinstall Windows from the DVD.

Weird... but now it works.

[oh dear]

Rename the hard drive??? That is the dumbest thing I ever heard. But after staying up till 3am, searching the internet far and wide for answers and calling Toshiba who wanted me to send back the notebook for repair, I tried it. I changed the name from C Drive to CDrive. Worked like a charm. Thank you a hundred times over!

[ozrom1e]

It is not so stupid this is a trick that has been used for years starting back in the floppy disk days when using a series of floppies to install something the second floppy and so on had to have a specific volume label so the install program knew where it was.

What is stupid is Toshiba's tech support does not know this about their own software.

Good solution.

[TKo23]

Wow, I was so glad when I found this thread. I bought a used Satellite that the guy had installed Vista onto. I wanted to go back to XP using the recovery disk and was having the same reboot after ramdisk problem. Found this thread, booted into Vista recovery, used the diskpart utility to relabel the drive to 'cdrive' without spaces and presto! the recovery disk works fine and the machine is now running on a clean XP install! AMAZING! Thanks for the tip!

[thebridget]

I had the same problem with the recovery disk starting, saying "loading RAMDISK image" and then booting as normal into Windows with no changes. I called Toshiba and they were extremely useless and said I should get my computer repaired because its probably a hardware problem.

Finally I found this forum and holy crap I couldn't believe how lame an issue prevented my system from reformatting. I just changed my hard drive name from "Local Disk" to "LocalDisk" and it actually worked. I'm very annoyed with Toshiba's product support and can't believe they don't know about this simple step to ensure recovery. I doubt I'll ever buy a Toshiba computer again, I've had so many problems.

[ZarakiKenpachi]

Ok, i found this by pure accident on google. i was going to click another link but my finger slipped and hit this one (i use a touchpad mouse). my friend was having trouble formatting his toshiba and asked me on messenger to help him look for a solution because he is on dial up and i am on high speed. i told him that i found this and to rename his hard drive to LocalDisk(C rather than Local Disk (C and then try his format again. Sure enough, it ended up working. i told him to call me if it did and, five minutes later i got a call saying it worked. we were thinking wtf? how does this even work. there is no logic behind it. then i told him that toshiba is anti spaces when formatting was probably the logic. we had a good laugh over it.

[ZarakiKenpachi]

damned : ) making a smiley face. you all know that the smileys are : )