Laptop Question

[LiqwudIce]

I am normally a very knowledgable person about pcs but i don't know much about laptops so i thought i'd try here. I helped my brother pick out a toshiba satellite a25-s207 laptop and he says to me that it has been running a little sluggish. The touchpad seems to pause at times.

Link to Specs of Laptop

I was wondering if doing a format on this laptop and installing the OS fresh is a good idea. I've heard of laptops where if you format it you can only reinstall using the cd that they gave you to "restore" the system.

I also wanted to ask about the speedstep technology that is out. Is there any way to find out if tihs laptop has it and also to find out when and how much the system is slowing? I want to know this to make sure that the system is running at full speed when it is on AC power.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I hope this is in the right section

 

[Wiktor]

In the specs of that laptop it says Intel Pentium 4 2.66 GHz, so it's a normal desktop cpu without speed step. However my laptop will slow down when on battery (when playing back videos, it will play in slow motion at low fps), I don't know why this is, but make sure it isn't set to "max battery power" - then it will run at full speed. (When on AC power it should be set to "portable/laptop" by default).

I don't know much about "brand" laptops, but I think it should be no problem to reformat and install whatever OS you want, just like on any computer (unless it has some special BIOS, but I don't think such things even exist). Of course you will need all the drivers for that laptop.

Oh and mybe your friend just isn't used to a touchpad ? Could be

 

[DurocShark]

The reason it's recommended by the MFGR to use the restore discs is because it's easier for THEM. Plus, that's the only way they'll support the machine. Keep that in mind while it's under warranty.

Plus, sometimes laptop hardware can be tricky. Especially power management configs. Takes some playing with to get things working the way they were from the factory.

Up to you how much effort you want to put into this. Since it's not yours, I'd recommend using the restore disc.

 

[DaveSimmons]

I just set up a Toshiba a15 for work with W2K server in addition to the shipped XP Home.

It's true that the included CD is just a Ghost image not a "real" XP CD, so the included CD will only let you restore XP as they ship it. This isn't so awful though since then the video, sound, netcard, etc. drivers are all installed for you. But if you do want to use a real OS CD the laptop won't do anything to stop you, there is no hard drive "lock" or anything like that.

If your brother would like to have a D: partition, you can use fdisk or Partition Magic to split the hard drive into multiple partitions before using the restore CD, and the CD will leave the other partition(s) after C: intact.