Ntantor

Hi again.. Just an update.. The method above worked fine to have the laptop's factory condition of the OS but still had some problems. 1. The F8 - Repair wouldn't show the Toshiba recovery option and 2. The Toshiba recovery application would fail to create Recovery disks.. But that is fine for me since i saved the "boot.wim" file to a USB and could restore the computer at any time, using the method above. This time i asked my friend to lend me his laptop for another day to try something and i prefer this method NOTE: You will need an image of another toshiba laptop to clone on your computer or it's set of recovery disks.. Doesn't have to be the same model or with the same drivers. I tried both methods to be sure. I had the L775-15T and borrowed the recovery disks of a C660-1P3 that i also cloned 1. Copied my friend's .swm files from the L775 on my USB (the .crc files too) 2. Used the image / recovery disks to do a recovery on the L775 using the C660 image / recovery disks 3. When finished, windows wasn't activated, drivers were not functioning correctly etc 4. Renamed my .swm files to match the C660 .swm files (15541xsp* - 14419xsp*) 5. Booted into Linux using a live cd 6. Deleted the .swm files that were on the recovery partition and replaced them with my own that i had previously renamed to match them (Windows wouldn't let me delete the files, that's why i booted into Linux) 7. Restarted the laptop, used the F8 - Repair option. The Toshiba recovery now was there. I used it and voila.. It used the new .swm files of the L775 to restore the laptop to it's original state, with all the functions working this time perfectly and allowing me to create the L775's recovery Disks, the F8 functioning etc.. I hope this method will help many of you guys out there! Cheers!

I would like to thank everyone for trying to help! I finally got this working using the help from you and parts of other links you posted especially the link jaclaz gave me! Thanks a lot. Really appreciate the help of everyone! I will tell you the steps i followed in case anyone else had the exact same problem: 1st i will say again what happened. A friend of mine has the Toshiba L775-15T with windows 7 home premium x64. He wanted to format the laptop but didn't want to go again through the whole windows updates procedure etc because of his slow internet connection. Hi didn't think too much of it though. He downloaded a version of windows home premium x64 including all the latest updates from a torrent site. He formatted just the OS partition ,leaving the small 400mb partition and the 3rd "recovery" partition untouched. After seeing his laptop without all the drivers and the Toshiba applications he freaked out and brought his laptop to me to do a proper format - recovery as i helped him do some time ago. But he hadn't create the recovery disk as i warned him to do so many times before.. PS: the F8 - Repair - Toshiba recovery etc. wasn't available anymore Solution: 1. Since the .swm files in the 3rd partition where too big for a dvd, i created a bootable Windows Installation USB 64Gb in size using Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool (you can use YUMI or any other similar application) 2. In the USB i created a new folder and copied there all the .swm files from the Toshiba recovery partition, along with the imagex.exe. Note: when i used the specific imagex.exe i had an error that the subsystem wasn't present and after a little search i downloaded from microsoft the proper x64 version of it (weird though that the original one wouldn't work) from here: http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/Windows%207/Windows%20Server2008%20R2%20SP1/sp2/Fix363073/7600/free/430546_intl_x64_zip.exe -- In case you need another version of imagex you can get it from this link from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=2525084&kbln=en-us 3. I booted the computer from the USB and when the windows installation started, i selected "Repair the computer" 4. Using the command prompt i navigated to the specific folder in the USB i had copied the .swm and imagex files 5. I run the following command imagex /ref 15541XSP*.swm /export 15541XSP.swm 2 boot.wim (This command merged all the swm files into a new boot.wim file, in the same directory. The file was close to 7GB) 6. Then i run the command format c: /fs:ntfs /q /V:Windows (Take care here to make sure that your OS installation was in C:\ ). In case you are wondering, i 1st ignored this step and at the end the applied image that will follow, wouldn't load properly, so i added this step and all worked fine. 7. Then i run imagex /apply boot.wim 1 C:\ and restarted the computer. The Toshiba recovery procedure started and after a few restarts the laptop came to life in its original factory state. PS: If you get any errors (didn't happen to me) about the boot record or something like that, boot from the windows repair console and hopefully it will repair it My friend is now with me, thanking you guys all.. He WILL BE buying the drinks tonight! Cheers Thanks again for all your efforts!

Hi, thanks for the response! The 15 .swm files are 13.6GB in total. I am using a 64GB usb disk I wil follow now the instructions of the link you posted. As for the partitions, i just stated every little detail in a post above Will let you know of the rest as soon as possible

Hi, and thanks for the response! Ok, before i even do anything i had created an image of the whole notebook disk, using Acronis, on my external disk in case of anything going wrong.. I just recovered the image as the computer was when i got it.. I have noted everything in the disks and made sure than no other usb or sort is attached to the computer. Here goes: Partition 1: 400MB "invisible" partition with 100% free space - Healthy (Active, Recovery Partition) as stated in Computer Management - Disk Management Partition 2 (C:\): 349.61GB visible partition Containing the OS - Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) as stated in Computer Management - Disk Management Partition 3 (D:\): 348.63GB visible partition containing just a HDDRecovery folder with subfolders containing the imagex and .swm files - Healthy (Active, Primary Partition) as stated in Computer Management - Disk Management The C:\ partition contains the folders: Perflogs, Program Files, Program Files (x86), Users, Windows After repeating the imagex procedure now, the only difference i see in any of the partitions is that a new folder is created Again in C:\ "Recovery\Windows RE" with a file "WinRE.wim" inside (195MB) PS: I even double checked the USB that i used for the Windows Installation in case anything changed there.. nothing was changed!

Hi friend! Thanks for the response! As you correctly mentioned, the 3 partitions still exist.. The small partition, the partition containing the OS and the partition containing the toshiba recovery. It is possible (and that is what happened actually) to install Windows onto the OS partition. And the computer will work and boot into windows without the other 2 partitions be affected.. So when i say it booted again into windows i mean the OS installed by my friend. 1. To summarize, it was NOT repartitioned.. Just the windows was installed on the 2nd partition that contained the "original" OS by toshiba 2. As i mentioned, i followed the steps provided above and used imagex. The procedure completed 100%, then i restarted the notebook and the windows booted again as before i did anything. That is what i mean.. as what you said.. The windows my friend installed have not been overwritten by the contents of the applied image.. Just that new folder was created in C:\ as "Recovery\Windows RE" with a file "WinRE.wim" inside (195MB). I apologize if that isn't clear enough.. I don't know how else to explain it.. Thanks though for your effort and response!

Hi, this is my 1st post in this forum and wanted to say thanks for all the information i have found here. I have a similar problem. A friend of mine decided to be a "pro" on computers and had the amazing idea of formatting his Toshiba with a normal Windows CD instead of asking and using the recovery partition (btw he didn't create the recovery disks). Thankfuly he didn't delete / format the recovery partition. Seing that what he did was stupid he brought me his laptop to help him recover it. So.. I followed your instructions in this way: 1. The .swm files (15 files) were too big for a dvd so i created a bootable windows usb in which i copied all of the .swm files in a folder Factoryreset in the root directory alongside with the imagex file 2. Booted the Windows installation as you said, from the USB, then “ repair your computer “, then “ Command Prompt “, went into the factoryreset folder and run "imagex /ref PREINST*.SWM /apply PREINST.SWM 1 C:\" 3. After that i got the message "The subsystem needed to support the image type is not present", that i solved after downloading another x64 imagex from microsoft and rerun the procedure 4. That worked. The procedure completed succesfully 100% 5. Restarted the laptop but nothing happened. Booted again into my friend's "clean" windows installation. I noticed though that a new folder in C:\ was created: "Recovery\Windows RE" with a file "WinRE.wim" inside (195MB). To be sure, i deleted the folder, restarted the computer, the folder wasn't there, i rerun the procedure and the folder was created again.. 6. So.. the big question is ..now what? Thanks in advance for your responses!!! PS: before that i installed toshiba recovery disc creator application, hoping it would work. No lluck. Gave error message "No HDD recovery Area!" even though the recovery partition is there, untouched (size and files unharmed)