I think tabletpcbuzz.com was down and this post

[teemue]

I think tabletpcbuzz.com was down and this post was deleted so here we go again, since ppl are asking this thing frequently

read the final notes at the bottom before starting.





RECOVERING TOSHIBA PORTEGE 3500 TABLET PC
- without external USB-floppy drive
- without external USB-cd/dvd drive

Now Toshiba Portege 3500 is one of the first Tablet PC's which were powerful enough to be handy quality machines already as tablets, but one thing totally sucks.
The problem is that Toshiba Portege 3500 can't boot from all usb-cd/dvd-drives. So booting from recovery cd is impossible without the right external cd drive. Portege supports only Toshiba's own cd/dvd -drives and couple of others (a list can be found from google).
If you have an external USB-floppy drive, you can then try to find USB-drives for your external cd-drive and try to go from there (see the end of this guide). If not, the only option left is to use PXE -booting (booting from network), which is done by using another computer as your "external drive" to load a boot disk's info into into tablet pc's memory. And then copy the recovery cd's from the other computer to the hard disk of Portege...

Sounds too long to do? Want to search for something else? I have been searching 3 days through the holes of internet and this was my final solution. So if you do this right it will take only 2 hours and you should be ready to go... so let's start!
What do you need :
1. Toshiba Portege 3500.
2. Any other pc with Windows.
3. Crossover cable (looks like a normal network cable but you can see that the wires inside the head are in another order on the other end)
4. Toshiba Portege 3500 Recovery CD's
and some couple programs :

*
TFTP server for windows (tftpd32)
This is a great little freeware TFTP server with a built in DHCP server to dish out IP addresses to your laptop as it boots.
*
Syslinux tools - pxelinux.0 and memdisk
pxelinux.0 is a network boot strap loader and memdisk creates a virtual ramdisk to load the boot disk image into.
*
WinImage - Boot disk image creation tool
WinImage is a userfull utility to create boot images from floppy disks. It's not free, but you will get a useful 30 evaluation period to get you started. I think I might just buy this product.

- Also a DOS boot disk with network support can be downloaded from NU2
Download 'BFD full package v1.0.7.zip' from NU2

You also need to put format.com, fdisk.exe and sys.com on to the boot disk.
If they are not on the boot disk already, download them from internet :
http://www.techadvice.com/W95/S/start-up_disk_w95.htm

There are 2 good reports you should read;
1. http://home.allegiance.tv/~joem298/ and
2. http://luds.co.uk/m200
This text is mostly taken from http://luds.co.uk/m200/ and it applies for Toshiba M200 Tablet PC (which is a bigger brother of the old good p3500) but you can use it in our case for Portege 3500 :

** MAKE BACKUP COPIES OF EVERYTHING FIRST! BY FOLLOWING THIS PROCEDURE UNTIL THE END YOU WILL HAVE LOST ALL PREVIOUS FILES ON YOUR TOSHIBA P3500 HARD DISK! **
Configuring pxelinux.0 and memdisk
Download the SYSLINUX tools. Ignore the linux references since these programs work just as well for loading DOS or Windows operating systems.

Copy the pxelinux.0 & memdisk file to the root of the tftp32 server directory.
Create a directory called 'pxelinux.cfg in the same tftp32 root directory.
Inside the configuration directory create a text file called default and populate it with the following contents:

LOCALBOOT 0
label dos
kernel memdisk
append initrd=dos.ima
Modify 'dos' and 'dos.ima' to suit the image file name you will create later.

Instead of the filename 'default' you can create a name that matches your servers IP address, so that the boot process will find the pxe configuration quicker. e.g. for an address of 192.168.1.2 the file name would be 01-00-08-0d-40-b7-c7. See the readme documents that came with SYSLINUX for further details. Be careful when naming 'default' - windows easily names it as default.txt - IT WON'T WORK with .txt!

'dos' is a boot name you will be prompted for when you boot the Toshiba, and 'dos.ima' is the image name it will load. You can add multiple 'label' entries into this file to load a choice of images at boot time.
The TFTP Server
Download the TFTP server and install it.

On first invokation, it might complain that it can't start. You will have to ensure you do not have any other services listening on port 69 (other TFTP servers).

Go to the DHCP tab, and fill in the following fields:

IP pool starting address: 192.168.0.2
Size of pool: 1
Boot File: pxelinux.0
WINS/DNS Server: 192.168.0.2
Default router: 192.168.0.2
Mask: 255.255.255.0

Once complete click the SAVE button

Then go to the 'Settings' option and ensure that the following item is checked:

PXE Compatibility

You may also turn of all of the global settings apart from TFTP & DHCP server.

Exit the program and restart it. Hopefully tftp32 is now waiting for a network connection.
Creating a Basic Boot Disk Image

Unzip the contents of 'BFD full package v1.0.7.zip' into a temporary directory. Open a command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd.exe) and browse to that temporary folder. Run the command 'bfd msnet' in order to create the bootable floppy.

Download WinImage , install it, and run it up.

Keep the boot disk in your floppy drive, and:

Click on 'Disk'
Click on 'Use drive A:'
Click on 'Read disk'

Once the floppy has been loaded into memory:

Click on 'File'->'Save'

and save as an '.ima' file into the root of the tftp32 (server) directory. e.g. 'dos.ima'
Booting the M200 to DOS or WIN98

Now the fun starts.

Make sure tftp32 is running and you have selected the 'tftp Server' tab. This allows you to monitor the connection.

Ensure the Toshiba and PC server are both plugged into the same network.

Ensure that all firewall/virus protection software is switched off. DO NOT LEAVE THEM OFF WHEN SWITCHING BACK THE COMPUTER TO INTERNET! BE CAUTIOUS!

Boot up the M200 whilst holding down the ESC key, and you should be presented with a request to press F1. Do so.

You will enter the BIOS - Use the arrow keys to navigate to the 'Network Boot Protocol' field, and ensure that it is set to PXE. Then press END to save changes and reboot.

Press F12 almost immediately after the reboot. The screen should stop and allow selection from 5 small icons at the bottom of the screen using the arrow keys. Select the fourth icon along (looks like a network icon) and press enter.

You will see the PXE boot process searching for a DHCP server for a few seconds, and hopefully retrieve an IP address.

Then it will try to load the pxe configuration file in the pxelinux.cfg directory on your server. It will eventually find the 'default' file you created.

After reporting that it could not find the linux kernel image, it will present you with a 'boot:' prompt.

Type in 'dos' (or whatever label name you used), and it should then proceed to load the ram disk and then the boot image you created. Remember that the dos.ima file should be in your tftp 'server' folder

The boot will start and you will be offered 4 options. Select the first one and then portege goes forward and asks you questions. Just press Enter on each question (even on the password).

If all is well, you will now be at a DOS prompt. Job is done, except that we don't yet have network access to the server from DOS.

Now...

Share your tftp server folder :Click right button on it-> properties-> sharing-> share it.
There we will be putting all the files you need for restoring your Tablet. Check out what is the name of your other computer (Control panel - System - Computer Name). At the command prompt on your tablet type: "NET USE x: \\yourcomputername\yoursharedtftpserverfolder" (notice the space after x:)

Now you have access to drive X: in DOS prompt.

If you don't know how to move in DOS prompt, find guides for that somewhere from internet.
DOS can not read NTFS partitions, so we will make the hard disk a FAT (older type) with fdisk. In the same time we divide the hard disk into 2 seperate drives (partitions). This is where you will lose all files from your hard drive.

>fdisk (select yes to all questions about large hard drives, there might be problems with hd:s over 64g?)
- Delete the NTFS partition if necessary.
- If you don't know fdisk, read documentation about fdisk here : http://www.onecomputerguy.com/instal...drive_multiple
- Make 2 DOS (FAT) partitions. 1. C: 50%, 2. D: 50%.
>format C:
>sys C:
>format D:

Now copy both recovery cd's into the shared server folder (or subfolder)
Then we can copy all the recovery-files to D: drive :

>X:
>copy *.* D:

(This took 40 mins on my computer, so be patient)

Copy all the subfolders also as they are in the recovery folder. ('md [directoryname]' makes a folder in DOS or use xcopy)

>D:
>cd g_inst
>cd tools
>trecover.exe

Go to LOCAL -> DISK -> From Image. Find the Ghost file (.gho) on the D: drive and when it asks for the partition, select the 1st (drive C:) one. It will start throwing the Operating System to Hard Disk, partition C:.
It will ask for recovery cd 2, but if you just put it in the same folder as the cd1, just click ok.

Voila! Now restart the computer and it will run straight to Xp set up!!

One final thing to do still!!
You should convert your partitions back to ntfs's! Start -> Run -> cmd.exe -> then type :
> convert.exe c: /fs:ntfs (answer yes to all)
and
> convert.exe d: /fs:ntfs (answer yes to all)

WE ARE DONE!!!

FINAL NOTES

- I did this guide quite tired so it is possible that i missed out something / left errors, so feel free to try something different if the thing is not working as in the steps.
- Instead of using the bootdisk from the link, you could try to download the windows xp bootdisk (it will make 6 disks) and make an image of that with some program. Maybe this way you can access your hard disk as NTFS and not needing to transform it to FAT.
- There is another (better) way to do this process also - you can remove the hard disk from p3500 and move it to another laptop, format it, sys it and copy the cd files to the disk & put it back to p3500. I didn't have a laptop which could take 3500¨s hard disk myself though.
- I don't have any experience of other partition programs than fdisk, so maybe with partition magic or something else you can partition the hard disk without formatting everything (?).

Cheers,
Teemu Erämaa
http://teemu.eramaa.fi

[DaveTN]

Teemu,
Thank you very much fo rtaking the time to post, and subsequently repost this very inforamtive step by step guide. As a former owner of a 3500, I know how frustrating....and expensive this can be (I have three different USB and PCMCIA drives that are useless for recovering my 3500).
Since there are still a few of us 3500 users out there and since the buzz keeps going down, it would be a great idea to post this over at gottabemobile.com as well. I'm sure someone over there would find it useful.

Take Care,

David

[teemue]

Thanks for the tip. Just added it.

Also added this tutorial to : http://tabletwiki.com/mpc/index.php?...tege_M3500/FAQ

Fixed also some links, so it would be more useful to follow that tabletwiki.com post.

[sprintinrob1127]

hi just went through this tutorial. i got to the part where you are suppose to type in sys c: and my computer gives me an error saying that it is an invalid entry.
i kept going through the tutorial and now when i go through ghost i cant choose which drive i want the ghost file to go to.
help please.