Can't reinstall windows on Toshiba Satalite

[sothpaul]

I have an older Toshiba Satalite 2405-S201 that lost its hard drive. I bought a used (scrubbed) hard drive. I can't get the thing to boot from the CD. It will boot from a flopy, but when I try and register windows, I can't get the keyboard to work right. When I first boot, in sort of dos mode I guess, the keyboard inputs fine. But when I try and use the windows install CD, I can't get any numbers. Not cool. Any ideas? I don't have the original CDs that came with the laptop . . .

thanks

Paul

 

[Tedster]

you should be able to boot from a CD. if not you have some serious hardware issues.

 

[sothpaul]

I don't think it is hardware

Apologies to the group for this very late reply. Notification ended up in a spam folder and just noticed it.

The beast boots up fine. It will let me do everything short of letting me actually register windows. The keyboard mapping is all messed up. It's got the keypad built into the regular keyboard so when I need to get a letter, I get a number. Not good when trying to put in a serial number! I don't know if there is a way around this short of the original disks that would have the correct keyboard drivers. And actually I'm not sure how I'd put them on that disk either.

 

[Broni]

I checked Toshiba site and they don't have any keyboard driver: http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...=2405-S201&selCategory=3&selFamily=1073768663

Do you have any important data on the laptop.
I'm asking, because it may have recovery partition.
If it does...
Hold down the 0 (zero) key and turn the laptop on. Keep holding down the zero key until the TOSHIBA logo appears, where you should start tapping the zero key repeatedly. Stop if the unit beeps or when the TOSHIBA logo disappears. The screen should flash ** HDD RECOVERY MODE ** for a split second, then load the Toshiba recovery program right from the hard drive.
Be aware, all your data will be lost.