Restoring toshiba 1805-s254 with "WRONG MACHINE" error

[protosurge]

I recently had to restore a Toshiba satellite 1805-s254 notebook using the provided recovery cds. When I attempted to restore, I got the infamous "WRONG MACHINE" error. I searched the net and found little help to solve this problem. After a little investigation, I was able to restore using the restore cds in the following way:

-> Obtained a windows 98 bootdisk from bootdisk.com
-> Booted with bootdisk and recovery cd#1 placed in cd-rom
-> started fdisk and removed all partitions
-> changed directory to d:\base\ [d: is the cd-rom drive]
-> run os.bat
-> The ghost utility should appear and begin restoring from the cds.
If the ghost utility complains about free space, make sure that you
have deleted all partitions using fdisk.
-> After completing the 3 cds .. the program will exit and reboot
-> Keep the bootdisk in the floppy drive and boot to it again.
-> Once you reach the dos prompt ... type in 'fdisk /mbr' ... this wil restore the boot record if it was corrupted.
-> Remove all the disks and reboot. Windows should come up. Windows will peform some disk checks and you should be able to boot.

Hopefully, this will help others trying to restore toshibas. Please let me know if this method works or is only applicable to 1805-s254.

Cheers.

[Damned Angel]

This error is caused by the incorrect information or no information being in the DMI. To solve this problem properly, you will have to obtain the DMI writer program for you notebook and enter the model number of the machine to unlock the recovery cd's. You should also be able to bring it to any Toshiba repair depot and have them do it for free.