BIOS in japanese

[chris.hesketh]

I have a Toshiba satellite 1130. It got dropped a few weeks back and then refused to boot although power was getting to it, and charging the battery. I have obtained a new main board from E-Bay, but after installing, although the system now powers up ok, the BIOS is in japanese. Some of the keyboard controls do not work either, mainly the direction arrows, so I cannot go through the BIOS to see if I can change the language. ( Its an English keyboard, but I presume the BIOS is expecting a japanese layout??) I have tried updating the BIOS, with a bootable CD, as the system has no floppy drive, but keep getting told invalid product ID. The system originally had Win XP, but I cannot get it to boot, because I presume its a new mainboard that the install of XP soes not recognise. I cannot install XP, as I cannot change the boot sequence. I can access the boot sequence screen, but cannot alter. It always tries to boot from the HDD, although if I take out the HDD, it will boot from my XP cd!! If I took the HDD out and formatted it in my desktop system, and then installed it back, would it try and boot from the CD, if it dosnt find a valid OS, on the HDD, If so will an english copy of XP work, even if its a japanese BIOS, and if I can get it to install, can I flash the BIOS to an english version through windows? ( there is a BIOS update on the toshiba website, that can flash the BIOS through windows). I do have a USB floppy drive, but Im not sure if the mobo supports legacy USB devices in the BIOS, so not sure if it will work.
Sorry this is a bit long winded!! I hope somebody can offer any advice,

Many Thanks

Chris

[houseisland]

All I can offer here is an expression of sympathy.

I have done some work on Japanese laptops -- I can speak some Japanese, but over the years since studying the language I have become largely illiterate. The experience of working of these systems is most bewildering. I understand your pain. Taihen, desu ne?

I suspect that you may be SOL. Japanese domestic electronics are quite different from export models.

Have you tried complaining to the EBay vendor? Often times the people who sell these things just flip them (i.e. buy them to resell) without really knowing what they are or what condition they are in. Most reputable vendors will refund or exchange. A while back, I bought an HVD SDLT drive which had been advertised as an LVD unit -- the vendor did not know -- with a bit of complaining and explanation on my part, the vendor eventually made things right.

Gunbatte kudasai!

[leezer3]

Hiya,
To my mind, the best thing you could do is to take out the HDD & stick it in the desktop. There format the drive so that it is bootable, and copy the contents of the XP cd to a folder in the HDD. You should then in theory be able to install XP, I would think?
Just a thought before you try that though- Many Toshiba laptops have a windows based BIOS config program, and so you might be able to put that into a BartPE CD, & then reconfigure your boot order from there.

Cheers

-Leezer-

[slavedriver]

I have a Toshiba satellite 1130. It got dropped a few weeks back and then refused to boot although power was getting to it, and charging the battery. I have obtained a new main board from E-Bay, but after installing, although the system now powers up ok, the BIOS is in japanese. Some of the keyboard controls do not work either, mainly the direction arrows, so I cannot go through the BIOS to see if I can change the language. ( Its an English keyboard, but I presume the BIOS is expecting a japanese layout??) I have tried updating the BIOS, with a bootable CD, as the system has no floppy drive, but keep getting told invalid product ID. The system originally had Win XP, but I cannot get it to boot, because I presume its a new mainboard that the install of XP soes not recognise. I cannot install XP, as I cannot change the boot sequence. I can access the boot sequence screen, but cannot alter. It always tries to boot from the HDD, although if I take out the HDD, it will boot from my XP cd!! If I took the HDD out and formatted it in my desktop system, and then installed it back, would it try and boot from the CD, if it dosnt find a valid OS, on the HDD, If so will an english copy of XP work, even if its a japanese BIOS, and if I can get it to install, can I flash the BIOS to an english version through windows? ( there is a BIOS update on the toshiba website, that can flash the BIOS through windows). I do have a USB floppy drive, but Im not sure if the mobo supports legacy USB devices in the BIOS, so not sure if it will work.
Sorry this is a bit long winded!! I hope somebody can offer any advice,

Many Thanks

Chris

If you can't enter the bios per instructions, you can flash the bios by cdrom



You can access the BIOS settings on these models using any one of these 3 methods.
From the Windows Control Panel, launch the Toshiba HWSetup program. HWSetup provides a user-friendly graphical frontend for modifying BIOS settings. Please note that if you change some settings, you may be required to restart your computer. HWSetup comes preinstalled on your Toshiba portable PC, or it can be downloaded as part of the Toshiba Utilities package for your model.

Press the [Esc] key while the system processes its Power On Self Test (POST). In order to use this method, the computer must be "off", meaning not in sleep/suspend or hibernate mode. Press the power button, then immediately press the [Esc] key (it doesn't hurt to hold the key down). When the POST finishes, you'll be prompted to press the F1 key to enter BIOS setup. Press the [F1] key to access the BIOS setup program.
From MS-DOS, run the TSETUP program. TSETUP must be run under real mode DOS (not a Windows-based MS-DOS prompt) with no memory manager (like HIMEM.SYS, QEMM386, or equivalent) installed. TSETUP was provided originally with your computer, or you can download it




These instructions assume you are well-versed in CD-ROM authoring or that you have an intermediate to expert skill level with PCs and CD authoring in general.
Requirements:
Your Toshiba notebook PC must have a bootable CD-ROM (CD-R/RW/DVD) drive
A separate PC with both 1.44MB diskette drive and CD-R/RW drive
CD authoring software that can produce a bootable CD in the installed CD burner. Capable software includes Nero, RSJ, Easy CD Creator, and others.

Steps
Create the BIOS installation diskette following the instructions in the README file that came with the downloaded BIOS.
Following your CD authoring software's instructions, create a bootable CD using the BIOS installation diskette as the 1.44MB image source.
Set the boot priority on your Toshiba notebook PC to boot from the CD-ROM before the HDD
Insert the bootable BIOS installation CD that you created into the notebook's CD-ROM drive
Turn the notebook on. The notebook should boot from the CD-ROM and install the BIOS.
When the BIOS update is complete, eject the CD and reboot the notebook.