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I inherited a Toshiba Portege R500-S5008X from my supervisor and would like to reformat it and reinstall Windows XP before starting to use it. I eventually found Toshiba's support pages that list drivers and utilities for Windows XP.

What essential steps should I take before doing this to ensure that I will be able to get it running again with full features afterward? I have exported all the information from System Information (msinfo32.exe) and e-mailed it to myself so that I can find the names of any missing drivers. Anything else I should do?

Robotnik
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Michael Hoffman
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2 Answers2

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I would go to toshibas site and download all the drivers for it and put them on a separate drive or burn a cd. Yes you have their names - but if this is your only machine, once you wipe it lets say you need the network driver to use the network to download the drivers..like the network driver? that would be an issue-very annoying. I always download the need (and 'unneeded' drivers) first and then do the wipe. And check their site to see if some drivers must go on before others. This is not unusual that some low level drivers, especially for laptops, need to be installed in a certain order. Also, might as well check BIOS level while you're at it.

joe
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If like the Toshiba Tablets I have at work your laptop has a recovery partition, you might be better off using that, it will save you time looking for drivers. The only downside is that it may also install all of Toshiba's utility software, some of which is pointless as it mirrors what Windows does normally. (wifi controls, etc)

Tog
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