Recovering Toshiba M200 XP to a partition

Being the prepared person that I am, I have been thinking about uni this year, and getting all the things I need done before it starts done now.

For the last year and a bit, I've been using my Toshiba Protege M200 tablet as my main note-taking device, and its been working great (see this post). During my break, I upgraded to Vista, and am generally very happy with it (then again, Windows has very rarely caused me issues).

The two major problems I have with it though are performance, and battery life. Performance isn't that bad, though it definitely is slower than XP, but I find the machine more responsive (i.e. it doesn't completely freeze up while some program is doing something). Battery life has taken a hit though, cutting an hour or so off what I usually get. This is a problem if I'm gonna use it at uni, so I've decided to install XP and Office in a tiny 6GB partition.

Sounds easy, but actually isn't, especially given the crappy Recovery CDs provided by Toshiba (if indeed, you got any).

I'm not going to cover all the steps involved here, only the bits that I haven't found documented very well. This is a fairly geeky process, so only proceed if you know what you're doing. No guarantees either; in fact, expect your machine to be bricked. Do read the entire post before you start, because there are some pre-requisites that you need.

Quick checklist of what's needed:

• Norton Ghost (particularly, Ghost Explorer; comes bundled with some editions of Norton SystemWorks)
• Toshiba USB floppy drive (other branded ones may work)
• USB CDROM drive
• a computer with a CD burner
• floppy disks - at least 6
• internet access, preferably throughout so you can hit google when you're stuck, and
• patience; hopefully not too much.

Backup first.

I used Norton Ghost and ghosted the entire hard disk to another computer - plenty of guides out there, and fairly straightforward anyway. Alternatively, you can use Vista's in-built Complete PC Backup tool (if you have Vista Business, Ultimate or Enterprise) - instructions at http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial145.html.

You will need a USB floppy disk drive for Ghost (unless you use the SD card image trick - save floppy as an image, then name the image $TOSFD00.VFD, select the SD card as the boot device on the M200 and it'll work).

Be warned that chances are, Vista will not boot when you restore the Ghost image due to the way the boot loader works, so you'll need some way to fix that. And if you used Vista's in-built Complete PC Backup tool, you'll need this too, to access the restore functionality. The best way is to load the Vista Recovery Environment from the Vista install CD, but you'll need the Toshiba proprietary drive for that (as crappy Toshiba didn't allow booting from standard USB CD/DVD drives). This makes recovery very difficult, as Vista basically expects a bootable CD/DVD drive (and why not, my old Celerons could do this). One trick is to download the Vista Recovery Environment ISO file here, create another partition, mark it as active (boot partition), make that partition grub4dos bootable, then place the ISO file in that partition and boot into the ISO using grub4dos. The grub commands are:

• map --mem (hd0,3)/Vista_Recovery_Disc_x86.iso (hd32)
• map --hook
• chainloader (hd32)
• boot

Amend accordingly if your partition numbers are different, or the ISO file name differs. Once in, click Repair your computer, accept the repairs, restart and you should be on your way. This is a pretty nasty workaround, so fingers-crossed you won't need it.

Partition the hard drive

There are a number of ways to do this, but the best way I think is to use Vista's in-built disk management tool (other tools tend to bugger up Vista and require a Vista repair to get it working again). Make sure you have enough space first.

See the Shrinking Windows Vista Partitions or Volumes section at http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial133.html. When you confirm the shrinking action, it isn't terribly informative as to what it's doing - the only indication is the busy spinny circle in the disk management window. Be patient, and when it stops spinning, it's done.

If, like me, you found that the amount you can shrink by isn't enough, see the instructions here - http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/working-around-windows-vistas-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problems/. For me, the most effective solution was to download, install and use Perfect Disk to defragment my hard drive, using the Offline method (note: if a reboot is required using this method, the screen may stay blank when booting up - this is normal and is Perfect Disk working its magic; be patient). Then try shrinking process again.

When considering how much free space you'll need to allocate for XP, keep this in mind - A standard Windows XP Tablet PC Edition install takes about 2.5GB; and both the page file and hibernation (if you choose to active either), will take up space equal to the amount of RAM you have installed individually. Office 2007 takes around 900MB (due to the installation files being stored locally), and you should leave at least 1GB free space for Windows to work with. I chose 6GB, with both the page file and hibernation disabled.

Try to allocate enough space now, as it is very difficult to reallocate later. If you try using tools like GParted (as of parted 1.8.1), you may find that your partitions don't boot anymore because it doesn't always copy the NTFS partitions properly, resulting in errors, and it doesn't copy Windows XP's boot loader properly either, resulting in an invalid boot.ini error. These can be fixed using XP's Recovery Console though which can be booted from the boot floppies you're gonna create.

Once you've made enough unallocated space, right-click that space and select New Volume, and create a new primary partition taking up all the space available. Use NTFS as the file system. Once that's done, I suggest you label the partition by right-clicking it, selecting Properties and typing something into the text box at the top. This way, you can easily identify the XP partition.

Creating your XP CDs

Here comes the trick. You may be thinking - can't I just use the recovery process on my recovery CDs? The answer is no, because that process assumes you want to wipe your entire HD, which you don't want to. So what we have to do is recreate some XP CDs - which we should've been given instead of stupid recovery CDs grrr.

Credit for the following instructions goes to here - http://www.gottabemobile.com/forum/printer_friendly_posts.asp?TID=339 (part 2). Below is an adaptation of those instructions for the M200.

If you're lucky, you would've gotten a set of 4 recovery CDs in the box with your M200. If not, stop here, find yourself a set (or torrent for them) before continuing. If you have a complete drive backup of your Windows XP installation, that'll suffice.

Perform the following instructions on a computer with a CD burner.

1. Create a folder on your desktop called M200BaseImage.
2. Insert recovery CD 1, navigate to the BASE folder inside, and copy all the .GHO and .GHS files into the folder you just created.
3. Repeat for the other 3 recovery CDs (28 files in total).
4. Create two folders on your desktop, named VRMPOEM_EN and VRMPOEM_EN2.
5. Open up Ghost Explorer, go to File -> Open, navigate to the M200BaseImage folder, and double-click on PREINST.GHO.
6. It'll now ask you for the password. If you have the recovery CD set with the P/N TR04C11E*CD, where the * is the CD number, the password is 2566 (thanks to the 'crack' procedure at http://weller.ws/toshiba/norton.html). Otherwise try the other codes available on that page, then the hacking procedure as a last resort.
7. Click Yes to the Warning message about spanning.
8. Once it has finished loading, copy the folders SUPPORT and VALUEADD to the VRMPOEM_EN folder by dragging them (or copy & paste).
9. Copy the folder CMPNENTS from the image to the VRMPOEM_EN2 folder.
10. Now navigate inside the WINDOWS folder in the image, and copy the folder I386 to the VRMPOEM_EN folder.
11. Still inside Ghost Explorer, go into the SYSTEM32 folder, find the file wpa.dbl and copy that to the VRMPOEM_EN folder also. You can close Ghost Explorer now.
12. Now from a Windows XP SP2 Install CD (upgrade or full version, doesn't matter), copy everything except the SUPPORT, VALUEADD and I386 folders, and wpa.dbl. Leave the XP CD in the drive.
13. To make the process easier, you can choose to create a folder called DRIVERS inside VRMPOEM_EN2 and place the XP drivers for the M200 there, in particularly the network card drivers so you at least have internet access to download others. Otherwise, you can use a USB thumb drive instead. Drivers available from http://www.isd.toshiba.com.au.
14. You now need to extract the boot image from the XP CD. This can be done using a utility like ISOBuster, or Bart's Boot Image Extractor. The file is generally called Microsoft Corporation.img. Place this file on your desktop. The XP CD can be ejected after. If using ISOBuster, see step 4 in these instructions for help - http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp.
15. Just as a final check - the VRMPOEM_EN folder should contain: DOCS, DOTNETFX. I386, SUPPORT, VALUEADD, AUTORUN.INF, README.HTM, SETUP.EXE, SETUPXP.HTM, WIN51, WIN51IP, WIN51IP.SP2, wpa.dbl. The VRMPOEM_EN2 folder should contain - CMPNENTS and DRIVERS if you chose to put the drivers there.
16. The CDs are now ready for burning. Insert a blank CD, and using your favourite CD burning software, burn a CD containing everything within the VRMPOEM_EN folder, with a volume label of VRMPOEM_EN and a boot image set to the file extracted in step 14. If you're using Nero or Easy CD Creator, step 5 at http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp may help.
17. Burn another CD containing everything within the VRMPOEM_EN2 folder, with a volume label of VRMPOEM_EN (note the number 2 is not wanted). This CD doesn't need to be bootable, so don't worry about the boot image.

You have just recreated the generic Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 CDs.

Creating boot floppies 

Problem is, you can't actually boot off them (unless you have the proprietary CD drive), so you'll need to create some boot floppies (yes, you'll need a floppy drive - alternatively, try the network PXE method; much more complicated). There's 6 in total, and they're available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=535D248D-5E10-49B5-B80C-0A0205368124&displaylang=en.

Make the XP partition bootable

I deliberately separated this step from the partition step in case people don't read the instructions through first. If you've managed to complete all the above steps successfully, boot back into Vista on your M200, and return to the Disk Management console. Right-click on the XP partition and mark it as active (right-click on partition, click Mark Partition as Active). Note, this means you won't be able to boot into Vista anymore, unless you reverse the active flag back using a boot disk. This step is necessary for the XP installation process.

All set, let's install XP

Alright, now connect your USB CD drive and floppy drive to your M200, and boot it up using the XP boot disks (you might have to go into the BIOS and change the boot order, or mash the ESC key on startup to force it to boot from the floppy).

Once in, it's a standard XP installation process. The product key it asks for is located on the bottom of your M200. At some point, it will ask for CD 2 - insert it. Then it will ask for CD 2 again; this time, re-insert CD 1.

If however, you can't boot using your XP boot disks, and get errors like UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME, first check that your boot floppies are not defective by running a disk check (happened to me). Then check that the hard drive inside the M200 doesn't have disk errors by running another disk check. If there's still an error, try formatting the Windows XP partition again - you'll need to use a boot disk for this now (http://bootdisk.com/).

When XP is all done, install drivers, setup desktop etc., then right-click on My Computer, select Manage, click on Disk Management, right-click the Vista partition and select Mark Partition as Active. Reboot.

Setting up dual-booting

On reboot, Vista should boot up again. You shouldn't have to switch active flags each time you want to boot into XP though, and you don't have to.

Once Vista has booted up, download and install VistaBootPro.

Run VistaBootPro. It should tell you you only have 1 OS installed, Vista. Click on Manage OS Entries, check the Add New OS Entry checkbox near the bottom, type in a name for your XP installation (only for your identification purposes), select Windows Legacy in the OS Type box, and in OS Drive, select the drive letter for XP as seen from Vista (the letter is actually irrelevant; it gets converted to the disk offset value the partition starts at - the drive letter is only so you can identify a partition). Click Apply Updates. Now on reboot, you should be able to choose between XP and Vista.

If luck was on your side, it should work like clockwork. If not, well, all I can say is, I'm glad I'm not you, seeing as I spent the last few days trying to get this working, the hardest bit being the lack of a bootable CD drive - stupid, stupid, greedy Toshiba .