Vista Installation/Bios problems

[Catriona]

I received a Vista upgrade CD from Toshiba. When I tried to install Vista
something happened to my Bios and I had to send it back to Toshiba to be
replaced. I'm trying to figure out how to install it without once again
ruining my bios. Any suggestions? Any help in the simplest terms possible
would be great!

Thanks

 

[John Lowenthal]

A) It's hard to help when the best explanation you can give is "something
happened to my bios."

B) There's no reason you should have to send the laptop back to have the
bios re-flashed. I'm sure Toshiba's website has instructions on making a
bootable CD or Floppy that can re-flash the bios.

C) There's no inherent reason upgrading to Vista should cause your bios to
get wiped. Chances are it's a fluke and you'll be fine if you do it again.

D) Don't upgrade to Vista, especially on a laptop. It's terrible.

 

[CB]

I received a Vista upgrade CD from Toshiba. When I tried to install Vista
something happened to my Bios and I had to send it back to Toshiba to be
replaced. I'm trying to figure out how to install it without once again
ruining my bios. Any suggestions? Any help in the simplest terms possible
would be great!

Thanks

Catriona,

The post following your post recommends that you don't install Vista
because it is terrible. Please disregard the advice of Mr. John Lowenthal.
Vista works very well for milliions of people, those people who know how to
configure and use an operating system.

If you don't know how to configure software and applications, and if
you do idiotic things on your computer, yes, you will have problems. Those of
us who know how to configure software and use the operating system are having
very few problems with Vista. I personally think Vista is superior to XP and
will get better as time goes by.

Have a nice day.

C.B.

 

[John Lowenthal]

I have Vista running just fine, but it is on brand new hardware. As many
users here have posted, older hardware frequently has issues with Vista,
despite being supposedly Vista-ready. The a clean install of the O/S without
anything else installed takes up nearly a gig of RAM on it's own. Then there
are the driver compatibility issues with peripherals such as sound cards and
printers. Bottome line is Vista is terrible for older hardware. Seems to be
fine with the very latest.

I still get much better FPS in my games when I boot into XP.

 

[Catriona]

Thank you for all the advice. My laptop is less than a year old and meets
the requirements. I have done the microsoft upgrade tool and didn't have any
significant problems.

As far as the bios goes...it just completely stopped working. You could
turn the laptop on and there would be no reaction at all. The lights would
light up, but that was it. The drive wasn't working, nor was the screen
working. When I sent it back to Toshiba they stated on the work order that
they replaced the bios.

The disk I have is the one that Toshiba handed out to people after Oct. of
last year, but before Vista came out.

As far as Vista vs. XP, I appreciate your input. I would like to try Vista
but not if it isn't worth it. So all your comments are helpful.

I would like to try to install it, but I'm afraid of having the same problem
as last time.

Here are my specs...

Intel Core 2 t7200 @ 2.00 ghz 2.01 ghz
2 gigs of ram
and 200 gb hard drive.

Not sure if that helps.

I have a decent knowledge about computers, but I'm a little rusty on the
techinical aspects.

Once again thanks for the help

 

[DarkSentinel]

Thank you for all the advice. My laptop is less than a year old and meets
the requirements. I have done the microsoft upgrade tool and didn't have
any
significant problems.

As far as the bios goes...it just completely stopped working. You could
turn the laptop on and there would be no reaction at all. The lights
would
light up, but that was it. The drive wasn't working, nor was the screen
working. When I sent it back to Toshiba they stated on the work order
that
they replaced the bios.

The disk I have is the one that Toshiba handed out to people after Oct. of
last year, but before Vista came out.

As far as Vista vs. XP, I appreciate your input. I would like to try
Vista
but not if it isn't worth it. So all your comments are helpful.

I would like to try to install it, but I'm afraid of having the same
problem
as last time.

Here are my specs...

Intel Core 2 t7200 @ 2.00 ghz 2.01 ghz
2 gigs of ram
and 200 gb hard drive.

Not sure if that helps.

I have a decent knowledge about computers, but I'm a little rusty on the
techinical aspects.

Once again thanks for the help

Did Toshiba SAY the BIOS got wiped? What you described could have been any
number of things. I have serviced enough laptops over the years to know this
is true. There is nothing in Vista that I know of that would even mess with
the BIOS except to scan it. There is no flash utility that comes with it.
What more than likely happened was that there was some hardware failure. As
for you specs, they are fine for Vista. You didn't mention the video, but
all that would effect normally is the ability to run Aero at full capacity,
thought there may be some problem with some chipsets.

But, bottom line here, as I tell everyone is use what works best for YOU. If
XP works better, by all means, stay with it. I was reticent to use Vista
myself until it got shipped on my new system, but it's slowly starting to
grow on me. Just one thing to remember. Don't let the zealots from either
side sway your decision, ultimately YOU have to make the decision on what
works best.

 

[C Royall]

Catriona:

I personally work on laptops as well as desktops, and it sounds to me from
the desription you gave that your memory crashed. The symptoms: 'You could

turn the laptop on and there would be no reaction at all. The lights would
light up, but that was it. ' are atypical of memory failure in a laptop. People who just tinker with them usually are not aware of that. Also, the major computer manufacturers such as Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, blah, blah, will reflash the bios after replacing the memory, as a precaution, in case the bios was doing something when the memory actually did crash, causing a corruption in the system. This does not always mean there was, just as a precaution in case there is and they just could not readily see it. A case of better safe than sorry.

As far as Vista is concerned it is possible that during some hardware tests
it simply caused the memory, or whatever hardware that was already failing to
completely crash. In this case, it is actually better it happened while you
were still under warranty... One thing I did learn of Vista, it finds
problems that XP does not, and can fix alot of them, however, in your case
may have caused the final crash. My recommendation is try VISTA out, and if
you do not like it, restore your computer back to it's original state.
Meanwhile, during testing, keep any important files backed up somewhere else
like a thumb drive until you decided for sure. Personally I love Vista, and
I am running on an old Gateway computer Pentium 4, 1 GB memory, with 2 500
pata's and 1 80 sata drive. It flies on my machine. The only problem I had
was with the graphics card, initially, but there was an update to it shortly
thereafter. From what I am hearing, most updates have taken care of many of
the older issues spoken of in earlier posts.

HOPE THIS HELPS...SORRY IF LONG WINDED.