Hi. I'm really new here, and although I can say that I'm a fairly competent windows user, I haven't really entered into the BIOS modding/flashing scene, and am thus completely lost. I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro L40 Laptop that came preinstalled with a Vista Home Basic OS. Unfortunate, after installing Ubuntu and fooling around with System Commander (biggest mistake of my life), I'm guessing that my MBR was permanently damaged. I was unable to boot into either of my OS's. After using the Ubuntu LiveCD to copy all my personal files to my external Hard Disk, I tried using the Toshiba System Recovery Utility that resides in a hidden partition in my Hard Disk named HDDRECOVERY. By default, I had 3 partitions: 1, the vista WinRE, 2. My C: drive, 3. The HDDRECOVERY I now regret not making a recovery dvd that is bascally copied image of the HDDRECOVERY partition, as this would have saved me a lot of grief, I believe. When I tried the Toshiba Utility (by pressing '0' on boot), and selected any of the options there to restore my computer to it's out-of-the-box settings, it just returned an error (either can't create partition, or not enough free space) so I decided to use the LiveCD again to liberally delete some proggy's from my bloated C: drive (now 55GB, with 18 GB given to the Ubuntu Partition) I found out that I could no longer mount or see the C: partition, and when I opened the Partition Editor (gParted), I found out that the error had turned my C: drive into unallocated space (no format) So i've pretty much given up. It's going to cost around $50 per DVD to ship to country, if ever I opt to have the recovery DVD's shipped to me (which I'm not even sure will work). So I've decided to just format my disk, and install vista. I have the code from the COA sticker at the bottom of the laptop. I'm confused... what exactly should I do to reinstall and have a reactivated Vista? I'm supposing that I already have a SLIC, given that my laptop, released August of Last Year, came pre-installed with Vista. I'm really lost... where should I get Vista OEM DVD? I'm downloading some right now on torrent, will these work? Also, will I still use the serial on my COA? or will the SLIC bypass activate my hypothetically installed vista without need of a Serial. If so, shall it still download updates and such? Lastly, will I be able to install Vista Ultimate? even if my Laptop originally had only Vista Home Basic? I've been searching around, and I've mostly found VISTA DVD's that used a linux-boot-loader (which I don't want for two reasons: it looks ugly and unprofessional; it might mess up with dual boot) or Modified Vista... I was hoping for a CLEAN copy... I have a lot of memory and space, and I really never experienced any performance issues with Vista, so I'm content with the clean (supposedly bloated) version. Any Help? my email is katylar@gmail.com, and I would be very grateful for assistance.
Sorry for double posting but... by the way, as of now, the only way to access my laptop is by using an Ubuntu LiveCD... so I can't check using everest and stuff... but I've read a different thread by another L40 user saying that his has a SLIC (but that he was having problems because of a softMOD)