hi there,

posting here with a plea for help on a Toshiba Satellite 5205 s705 notebook...

Sooo... I just got it back from the service center who replaced a HD that crapped out after 6 months. when I try to do a new install with the original toshiba discs, it gives me a "WRONG MACHINE" error. I dug around online, and it seems it has to do with the DMI configuration in the BIOS which has to be updated when you change a piece of hardware. The morons at RAF computer have done everything from flat out lying to me (tryign to tell me at first that the bad C drive was from someone else and the second completely different bay-style drive was the one I bought from them, until I said I had all the receipts & serial numbers so let's check), to making absurd, shot-in-the-dark suggestions ('it must have something to do with your original install discs'... which I've used probably 20-30 times to install windows on this machine, never with a problem). I told them what I thought it was - the dmi config, which apparently can only be edited using an .exe program specific to your model, that Toshiba provides to service centers. However, they want to charge me just to look at it, I really don't think they know at ALL what they're doing, and they refuse to let me have the dmicfg.exe file specific to my model so I can do it myself.

in short, what I have now is a laptop with new hard drive, that only boots to a C prompt and refuses my original install discs. My question is - am I correct, is it the dmi, and if so, does anyone know where I might get this file? Or is there some other way to edit this stuff in the BIOS? I'm really more of a macHead so I'm a bit of a fish out of water here, though I can get around in a DOS shell if I need to. I am aware that ye Authorized Service Center shoudl do it for free, but well, I'm in the Netherlands where service centers are few and far between, and my guess is that I'm going to get similar service as that of RAF.

if you have any advice, many thanks in advance... best,

Ursula