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