So the last time I was round my Dad's he presented my sister with a laptop his missus claimed from her work's "aladdin cave clearout" (lost property) only to then give it to me to "sort out"... well I've just got round to it and I wish I'd never agreed to....

On first boot, Windows (XP Home) gets past the blank-password login (for the unknown user "gp") to a virginial desktop - clean as - almost factory clean, and to the eye all seemed fine.

So I started out changing a few settings, nothing major, made sure everything driver wise was in order, set my sister up as a user, etc.... and I closed down the machine.

Firing it up again though and oddly things become sluggish on boot and I note the user "gp" returned to the login as default, despite having deleted the account... but the blank password entry didn't work anymore, so using the user/password setup for my sister I get into Windows - but this time I notice a cmd prompt window pop-up... I hadn't been paying attention before, it could well have popped up the first time, but this time my attention was firmly drawn to the words "registry", "crack" and "rollback" inside the cmd prompt's instructions.

So I've concluded the copy of Windows is dodgy - despite the sticker on the case's underside having the same version and build of XP and product key.... Obviously I'd rather not run the dodge copy, but the crack appears to be preventing me from getting at the system, and on each reboot (which I'm forced into by the sluggish response) appears to rollback every change I've made. I can't even get into BIOS to set the boot priority, or get the windows boot option...

I'm looking through the Toshiba manual - having downloaded all the latest drivers (big respect due to the Toshiba site's product support pages) - but haven't the will to read through it all. And I guess what I'm trying to get at here is, how do I FORCE the machine into requesting a rebuild? CMOS reset? Battery removal? Boot without a HD? Frisbee it out the window?

It'd be a shame to scrap it and see my sister go on suffering with my Dad's last hand-me-down, but it's pretty much dead to me/her at the moment and could do with some help....

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode and trying the changes there?

If you think it's dodgy you could always re-install Windows.

No way to get to safe mode as far as I can see - neither "del" , "F5" nor "F8" works.

I'm wanting to reinstall, but the machine starts to freeze whenever I start to move the mouse now (following my first bout of changes) - so getting anything from control panel to run is nigh on impossible; hence me querying if there was a more hardcore, hardware-based "brute force" method.

Will it boot a CD? If so could you use a Linux Live disc to format the drive?

If not, I'd be tempted to yank the drive and format it using another machine.

Not yet - I've tried removing \fastdetect from the boot.ini but still couldn't get any POST messages before the XP splashscreen.

Thinking that's the only option. Gonna open it up tonight and hope I can swap the drive into my portable HD's enclosure to get at it. Thing is though, if the laptop's not POSTing now, what's the chance of it POSTing on returning the HD having formatted it?

Replacing the HDD isn't going to change a machine's ability to POST per se. You can run through a cold reset (remove mains, battery and then hold down power for ~15 seconds, then reattach mains only and turn on), which resolves a lot of these.

It is quite possible that what you have is a machine that's been to depot for something like a hard drive replacement and you've got one of the test OS versions on there, which do often reset themselves each time they are run.

If you can PM me the 9 digit serial number from the bottom I might be able to check some additional details.

I was starting to think something similar.

Cheers for the suggestions lads - will resume the wrestling tonight and post back my progress...

I'm a bit confused by what you mean here... do you mean you cannot get into the BIOS screen at all, (FWIW if you press and hold the Ctrl and Esc keys and keep them pressed down while you switch it on it should give you a message along the lines of "Press [F1] to enter system setup" but you probably already knew that) or do you mean the BIOS screen is password protected?

In that I have no POST prompt to press any button, yes.

Ah Ha! I didn't, but will give it a go... let's hope if that works it doesn't have a password!

Will be looking at this again tomorrow, drinks last night and tonight mean there's no IT support from me.

On a Toshiba notebook it will be either Esc and then F1 or simply F2. However, if the Toshiba logo doesn't come up on screen at all you won't get into the BIOS.

On every Tosh laptop I've seen in the last 10 years or so, pressing and holding down the Ctrl and Esc buttons and turning the laptop on, (and keeping the buttons pressed) will display a message on the screen which contains the words "Press [F1] to enter Setup" or something very similar.

Honest!

It would be a new one on me, but not beyond the realm of possibility. I'll have a go on the ones in the Office, we've got a fair few to try with!

Ok, had a bit of a play around with a variety of machines.

Phoenix BIOS machines (Satellites, Satellite Pros) are all just F2. If you're doing corporate stuff you may well not see any of these.
Toshiba BIOS (Tecra, Portege and Qosmio ranges) mostly use Esc and then F1, and go (very quickly) via the Toshiba splash screen to the Press F1 message. Pressing Ctrl shouldn't make any difference at all on that one.

Just to confuse matters, machines made in the last 6 months or so now use F2 and the Toshiba BIOS has been rewritten to resemble the Phoenix layout, I assume to make life a little more straight forward for us.

That's useful... without wishing to labour the point, (too late, I know, but there you go!) did you try my method on them, (just for a giggle)?