Toshiba failtops

[Pob255]

Yep for that title I think you might guess where I'm going here, but probably not in the way you think.

At work, we used to use HP and a few acer and dell laptops, then with the A200 satellite Pro series we shifted over to toshiba, the price was good, the build quality was good and cheap educational extended warranty.

I expect you think I'm going to start complaining about the build quality or a bunch of faulty laptops, well I'm not, we've recently had a load (40) of the tecra R850 laptops, solid well built, good battery life, i3 + 4gb ram + intel centrino wireless (we've had issues with realtek and atheros in n), no complaints . . . at first.

They were all working fine the a month later we where getting all sorts of logon issues, we had major hassle trying to figure out what was wrong and we never did manage to pinpoint it exactly.
The issues we where having was because because toshiba puts SOOOOO much junk on their laptops, I'm not talking free trial software which there is some, I'm talking CRAP utilities, all of it trying to load on startup all of it trying to access the internet.

What we ended up doing was just wiping them putting on a new clean copy of win7pro (I have an image with all our key software on as well) and all the network logon issues disappeared and have never come back, infact they are now quicker in general than before, great I just had another 39 to ghost and resetup took a while.

So the powers that be have decided they want some more, but that model has already been replaced with the R950 it's the same just has the new ivybridge based i3 not the sandybridge also has win7pro and 8 install, we currently don't want 8 and will not go anywhere near it as it's not compatible with our security/logon software.

I got the first one to setup, so the supplier can save us the time and ghost all of them, initial boot up yep it's full of all the toshiba CRAP, now the new base ghost image I made for thr R850 should work, might need to update a couple of drives, no big deal.
Only after the ghost and going through the sysprep did I notice something, no windows key sticker . . .
Which means I've now basically this laptop, because there are no recovery disks, it only originally has a hidden partition recovery image only, which of course I wiped with the ghost
This whole lack of key sticker seems to be connected to windows8 and having a key in a hidden BIOS location.

And with all this I'm afraid I can no longer recommend Toshiba laptops to ANYONE.
They come with FAR FAR too much crap on them that it is simply not worth the time to uninstall and with this new key change it is no longer possible to use a clean windows install, so these are now total junk.
So unless you're prepared to buy new license key's along with your new laptop or prepared to spending longer cleaning out bad bloatware than it takes to reinstall+setup windows and all the drivers, then don't bother with toshiba.

I'm really to say this as for over 6 years now we've found toshiba laptops to be great the warranty repairs and support has been great.
But they have slowly become more and more infected with bloatware and now combined with the loss of a easy clean install.

[Smudger]

Will this not be an issue with all laptops as they move to Win8?

[Shamble]

New Windows 8 machines lack the traditional licensing stickers included with Windows 7 and previous because they all support SLP-style activation. This means you can put any Windows 8 disk (e.g. OEM, Retail, Digital River ISO) in a machine which has the correct activation BIOS string and it will determine the correct edition, install and then activate automatically all without the use of keys. If you want to install another edition you have purchased (e.g. an update) you are given the opportunity to enter this key later.

If you need the install media, you can contact Microsoft Support via. the support portal and they will supply this for a "nominal fee" (although I'm unsure how much this would be I think it's rumoured to be around the $10 mark).

[Pob255]

Yes I understand that, the main problem is two fold, 1 the new key system means you cannot use a normal window7 oem dvd to do a clean install, so if you want to use windows 7 you can only use the toshiba image and 2 the toshiba standard image is massively loaded with bloatware, I think it's around 25 separate thing you need to uninstall before it starts approaching a "clean image"
Although for a home/personal laptop you probably wouldn't nee to remove quite so much.

After talking to some technical people at the supplier who raised it with toshiba, apparently these use a 2 stage key system, part is in the existing image part is on the motherboard, so if you just put a normal windows8 disk in wipe the hard drive and try a clean windows8 install it will not work.
They use an additional encryption layer incorporated into their windows image, if you want to use windows8 you have to start with an original toshiba pre activated window7 image and use the toshiba supplied winowd8 upgrade disks, once you've done that you can make a set of recovery disks, which can be used on other laptops of the same model, but only on ones of the same model.

I was so happy when we finally started to shift to windows 7 because I could make one base image of windows with additional software which we could use on all pc's and laptops, rather than having to have a separate image for each type of pc and laptop, but now we'll have to go back to multiple images, esp as the images have become far larger than our older xp images.

On a contrast we've also recently got some Samsung Series3 300E laptops which are around the same price almost identical in spec and price but they have far far less pre-installed crap.
Similar situation with the hp probooks, a bit more expensive and a bit more crap than the samsung but still far less and far less intrusive than the toshiba bloatware.

[Pob255]

Just heard from a work contact who's hit the exact same issue but on a new satellite pro, seems like Toshiba are NOT using a standard bios based key for windows 8 but some encrypted system that uses both a key embedded into windows and on the motherboard So you cannot just use any normal windows media it has to be a toshiba supplied image.
So it is not possible to do a clean install without buying a new copy of windows (the toshiba image is so far from clean with all the junk on it, eg windows has a very good backup utility in it, so why do we need a backup utility from nero and another from toshiba that do the exact same thing?
Or how about the online registration reminder which runs with every reboot, even if you have registered it still runs, sitting in the background waiting for an internet connection so it can silently check if you've registered.

[Terbinator]

Same issue here with an Acer: http://forums.hexus.net/windows/2737...s-8-image.html

The installation won't even let me use my legit ISO from Miscrosoft that i used for my PC! Even tried adding some config file to the source folder to get it to offer up an OEM installation and still no joy.

[Pob255]

It's just taken me 4 hours to get it to a "clean" state

I was so thrilled with windows7 I could setup a single image I could use on any pc at work instead of having to have a separate image for each batch of computers and laptops, looks like I'm going to have to go back to having multiple images for each type again.

[Terbinator]

It's just taken me 4 hours to get it to a "clean" state

I was so thrilled with windows7 I could setup a single image I could use on any pc at work instead of having to have a separate image for each batch of computers and laptops, looks like I'm going to have to go back to having multiple images for each type again.

So are you still on 8?

I've just installed 7 then gone to upgrade to 8 and entered my Acer key in to be told this key doesn't match this installation of 8.

I'm literally screwed without buying a new key.

Edit: Is there no software that can clone the HDD to an SSD? I tried Acronis but it says the computer needs to restart to complete the clone and then nothing happens when it does reboot.

[Pob255]

Still on 7, but this funky key change effects 7 as well, there no actual key number sticker

[Rob_B]

What was the deal with getting the Win8 media key and that somehow activating Pro? I'm sure lifehacker had a post on doing that, would the upgrade to 7 then using that code then work maybe ? or even just using the media code?

[Rob_B]

What I was talking about ... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412400,00.asp

[Terbinator]

What I was talking about ... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412400,00.asp

I think i claimed one of those keys when that was on so i'll have a route in my inbox.

The only issue is (i think) if i had to re-install 8 again for whatever reason my laptop is hard wired to a non-upgraded serial.