Toshiba Satellite Pro L40 - can't restore to factory settings.?

[Katylar]

Can't Recover my Laptop with Out-Of-The Box HDDrecovery Utility.
Hi.

I have a Laptop with a 80Gb hard drive that came pre-installed with windows Vista Home Basic. It originally had 3 partitions: 1. A hidden Toshiba System Volume... I know that this is the Windows Recovery Environment Partition vista creates. 2. My C: Drive, and 3. HDDRECOVERY... a toshiba installed partition that should allow me to reformat and recover my hard drive with its out-of-the-box settings.

Recently, I've decided to dual-boot with Ubuntu, and so I partitioned my 68 GB partition (the C: Drive), and made a 55 GB Vista one and the rest went into an EXT3 Partition with my ubuntu on it.

I didn't like th GRUB loader, so I decided to try and use System Commander (it's a Boot Manager that allows you to select from a graphical menu on boot).

Unfortunately, System Commander basically wreaked havoc with my MBR, and all my OSs won't boot anymore.

I've used the Ubuntu LiveCD to copy all my personal files (music, documents, videos... etc) into my External Hard Disk Drive. I had planned to use Toshiba HDD Recover to restore my computer to its vista state.

I had successfully accessed this utility by pressing '0' on boot. However, after I tried it's options about restoring the system to out-of-the-box settings, it didn't work.

When I used to option restore all default partitions (I assume this would reconfigure my computer to a 3partition HDD), it said error: Unable to create partition.

(this error also aparently unformatted that partition... I had to reformat it in the Ubuntu Live-CD environment... and it would seem that all my date in that partition has been lost)

When I try to option on restoring the laptop but keeping my own current number of partitions, it says that their isn't enough space in my Hard Drive. Which is rather strange.

I'm afraid to use the option "Erase all data from Disk"... shall this option reformat my hard drive? How will I ever restore my Vista (it's expensive, and I naturally don't have a DVD or a serial key with me, as Toshiba no longer ships Disks with its laptops... only recovery partitions)?

My latest idea was copy the entire HDDRECOVERY PARTITION to my EXTERNAL HDD, then erase all data from the Disk, then using Ubuntu Live CD, create a partition in the unformatted hard disk and use the partition... hopefully, that would work. But I have doubts that the TOSHIBA SYSTEM RECOVERY utility that uses the images in the HDDR partition is standalone- it might need vista to run. and if I format the disk, there won't be any vista left, wouldn't there be?

I could really use some help.

P,S, In retrospect, I feel very dumb for not creating a Recover DVD... relying on a recovery partition is bad.

[Unregistered]

i have a RECOVERY dvd if any one need one just let me no at [email protected]

[Unregistered]

only the active partition will be erased not the hidden partition which contain your pre-built OS

[Unregistered]

hey just wonderd if paul is online and wants to send me a copy of his disk please would be much apprichated*.