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Help with Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC

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Deozaan:
Hi all,

A friend of mine has a Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC that's so infested with viruses and who knows what that the PC doesn't even know how to run exe files anymore. Nothing runs except Internet Explorer.

My friend would have just formatted and reinstalled himself, but the machine doesn't have an optical drive. I have an external drive I can plug an optical drive into, and have done that. But I can't figure out how to get the machine to boot from CD. I don't even know how to get into the BIOS.

Pushing F8 brings up an advanced boot menu which has options to boot into safe mode or reboot or boot normally, etc. Pressing F2 or F12 shows a few images: The first one looks like 3 CDs stacked on top of each other. The next one looks like a single CD. The next one looks like an SD card and a floppy disk. The next one looks like two computers networked together. And the final one looks like a stick of RAM.

I interpret these to mean: Boot from HDD, boot from CD, boot from floppy/removable media, boot from LAN, and possibly access BIOS? The problem is that they all go straight into booting Windows except boot from LAN, which tries to access something on the LAN.

So I can't tell if the machine even recognizes the external (USB) optical drive because I can't check the BIOS and I can't figure out how to get the machine to boot from CD. It does recognize it from within Windows and even launches the Auto Run menu, but when I click the button to install Windows it doesn't do anything, probably because the machine doesn't know how to run exe files.

Does anyone who has used a Portege, perhaps even this model, have any tips on how to get the machine to boot from CD or get into the BIOS? I don't have the instruction manual or any of the original information that might have come with the Portege.

Any useful information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

mouser:
i have an old hand me down portege (older model than yours) and it's a nice machine.
it also does uses an external optical cd rom.

my memory is that you can't just boot with any external cd rom -- to boot from cd you need their proprietary cdrom drive (or one made specifically to be compatible); that's my memory.

the boot from lan option sounds like something you should investigate -- i've never used it but it seems like it could be the way to go.

app103:
boot up into safe mode

go to start> run


* type in "command" without the quotes.
* then hit enter
* type in "notepad" without the quotes.
* then hit enter
When notepad opens, type this in:


--- ---Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open\command]
@="\"%1\" %*"


(there is a space before the second %)

save it to the desktop as fixexe.reg and then run it.

You should be able to run exe files now.

I had a similar problem recently with some nasty malware on my daughter's laptop, and this was how I fixed that. Then you can run malwarebytes to find & remove it while you are still in safemode.

app103:
Once you get his machine cleaned up, uninstall all versions of Java, flash, and shockwave.

Reboot!

Then download latest versions of all 3 and reinstall.

Disable Java in whatever browser he uses so he won't get reinfected.

I also suggest running Spybot and using the vaccinate feature, with all browsers closed.

If he is a firefox user (I hope he is) at the very least, install ad block and flash block. If he can handle it, skip flashblock and go for noscript.

And if he has been playing any facebook games, get a list for me. I am trying to track down the source of malware that keeps infecting my daughter's pc and the only place she really goes is youtube, gmail, and facebook. I think it's coming from ads in one of the facebook games she plays but I don't know which one. (I am suspecting yoville)

Deozaan:
boot up into safe mode

go to start> run


* type in "command" without the quotes.
* then hit enter
* type in "notepad" without the quotes.
* then hit enter
When notepad opens, type this in:


--- ---Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open\command]
@="\"%1\" %*"


(there is a space before the second %)

save it to the desktop as fixexe.reg and then run it.

You should be able to run exe files now.
-app103 (September 22, 2009, 01:29 PM)
--- End quote ---

Two problems:

1. Booting into safe mode and typing in "command" into the Run dialog says that Windows doesn't know how to run command.com.

I rebooted into Safe Mode with Command Prompt and then I was able to get notepad to run and safe the file, but then it didn't show any files on the desktop. So then I rebooted back into regular Safe mode and...

2. XP doesn't know how to run .reg files.

And since regedit is an exe, I can't manually enter that information either...

Do you have any other tips on any other methods to modify the registry?

Thanks!

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