I had to replace my harddrive on a toshiba laptop. I put the recovery disk in everything went good until I try to connect to the wireless internet. If I plug the usb cable in the laptop it works fine but why wont it find any wireless connections..thanks for your help

Toshiba puts a recovery partition on the hard drive.Here is how to access it to return it back to factory settings.
1.Turn the PC on and hit the F8 key repeatedly until the Advanced Boot Option Screen appears.
2.Click "Repair Your Computer" if you are not already on it and then press ENTER
3.choose your country and click OK
4. On the "System Recovery Options Screen" click "Restore Application" which is the last option.
5.Follow the on-screen instructions
6.When prompted, click on "Full Factory Recovery"
7."Next"
8.. Click "Yes"
9.you will notice for a while it seems like nothing is happening, give it some time.
10. After some minutes, recovery will complete and you click "Finish"
If you have replaced the harddrive you may still be able to get a disk from toshiba HERE

You have tried all possible solutions and troubleshooting.

My Suggestion is to check the Warranty of the Hard Disk and get it replaced. this possible shows a mismatch between the Laptop and hard drive.

1) have checked bios cannot see hdd mounted.

That is BAD -- the disk-drive could have "died".



2) tried a seagate hdd works fine so connections in laptop seem to be working

That shows that your motherboard is GOOD, but that your disk-drive is BAD.



3) can hear hardrive trying to do something as can hear harddrive usual noise, continous noise for about 5 sec before getting the error message

That is BAD -- the disk-drive is "dying".



4) no rattling or crackling noise from drive apart from the above

That is BAD -- none of the files can be read from your disk.




i have created a ubuntu boot up disk which allows me to access laptop but does shows error when locating hdd,

That is BAD.




once in ubuntu i can access internet but it does not show the windows partition of the harddrive, only shows ubuntu as opearing system, confused.

That is BAD. Only the CD/DVD disk has been mounted -- Ubuntu could not mount the disk-drive.




In regards to ubuntu working does this mean the hdd is ok?

No, it means that your motherboard is working.






and is there anyhting i can try via ubuntu to locate the files?

No. The disk-drive is "dead".




There exist commercial "data recovery" services that can try to repair your device, just long-enough to rescue and copy your files. For example, see: https://services.seagate.com/index.aspx?lng=en-US for a "no data - no charge" guarantee.

I think you frommatted your Harddrive, if you have bootable disk , put in your computer , it will gives you C:\ or D:\ drive just write FDISK
& follow the instruction, after formatted , put your windowx XP Cd for installation , your window will install soon, if you have miss any drive , download from internet.
goto "Google" write your specific driver name & download from internet.

To reformat is to wipe everything off of your computer's harddrive. If you do not have the Recovery Disks, or an Installation Disk, you will be sitting there with a blank harddrive, and no operational computer.

I just wanted to explain that.

Most people want to restore their computer to what it was like from Day 1, when it came from the factory. For your Toshiba this is, "Recovering the original factory image"

Before you start, you may want to save any documents you have, in your My Documents folder. (My Pictures, My Music, My Video, Documents)
Burn your personal documents off to a CD, or DVD disk.
AFTER you restore back to the original factory image, they WON'T be there anymore.

Your Toshiba has a recovery partition on the harddrive.
Most computers do not have the Recovery Disks sent with them.
Saves the computer manufacturer money. They found that most users do not use the Recovery Disks, and would rather use a repair shop.

They also put the Recovery Partition on the harddrive. Plus the user is asked if they want to make a backup, (Recovery Disk), when they receive the laptop, and start it for the first time.
Problem is you are only asked once.

To recover back to the original factory image:
1.Laptop off. Press and hold down the 0 (Zero) key. Press the Power On button.

2.The Toshiba Recovery Wizard screen should appear.

3.Click on the empty circle to the left of -> Recovery of Factory Default Software.
(DO NOT click on Erase the Hard Disk!)
Click on Next

4.Click the circle for -> Recover to out-of-box-state
Click on Next

5.You'll see a warning message, "All data will be lost during the recovery process"

That's the data, (Information), you have in your My Documents folder, plus any programs you downloaded, or installed.
If they weren't there when the laptop came from the factory, they will be gone.
You know this, it's okay.

You are recovering, (Restoring), your laptop back to what it was like when it came from the factory.

Click on Next. This will start the recovery process. When it is finished a message will come up, and state that the HDD has been recovered. (HarDDrive)

Press on any key. You are finished.
Questions?

Try to format it using an external cd-rom if you have one or using an external harddrive.

Is you new hard drive lager than you old on and was the disk drive a factory replacement cause with those disks if you even change just that they will not work

For specific models with different chipset drivers, you can get the sound driver & pretty much everything else on support.toshiba.com. If you can't connect to the Internet, "Tecra, Portege", & sometimes "Qosmio" models came with a built-in HDD recovery, meaning you need to create your recovery disk by running the "Recovery Disk Creator". An application to create your recovery disk. A shortcut is created on the desktop by default, if you cannot find it there, try looking at "C:\Program Files\Toshiba\Toshiba Recovery Disk Creator" & run the "exe" file, it should give you a menu to create one. After creating the disk, you can use that disc to install the drivers for all Toshiba pre-installed devices/softwares on that machine. For Satellite models, the disc should come with the laptop when you boughtt it. When you have the disc, just insert it inside of windows, it will give you options to install the driver & software for a specific toshiba device.


Hope this helps.

Sounds like either 1) bad disk or 2) bad motherboard. Replacing the harddrive and restoring using the restore cd is valid and will work as long as the disk is as large or larger than your current harddisk - Fortunately it is also the cheaper of the two options.

You may lose access to the free space on a larger harddisk as the restore cd may restore the old partition information as well as the data.

Hi Sam

First of all sorry to hear your story. But I guess you shouldn't think there is no solution left. I am Toshiba Technical Specialist and I used to work for Toshiba. Toshiba recovery CD is obtainable from Toshiba. you can call their hotline number or you can go to Toshiba authorized dealer. Recovery CD Cost about $39 including shipping. Alternately there is no harm to use different XP Operating System as long its correctly installed. But for the drivers you need to download from http://support.toshiba.com (if you dont use the Recovery CD)

If you need further info please post your request.

Good Luck