Windows 7 Installation Discs - Not working

[lgb2100]

18 months ago I purchased a Toshina Laptop which was pre-installed with Windows 7 - 64 Bit, and came supplied with Windows 7 - 32 Bit Recovery DVD.

 

The manual stated that it was best to burn a copy of the 64 Bit Operating system, as it may need to be required, and if not, replacement would be at a cost - to avoid this cost, I made a copy following the instructions in the manual. The DVDs were kept in a safe place.

 

However this weekend, I needed to re-install teh software, so decided to use the DVDs that I had created.

 

All appeared to go well, asked me to remoce DVD, however, during the process an error message popped up, informing me to press OK, and to restart the installation. This I did for a second time, only to get the same error message.

 

I decided to try the 32 Bit installation disc, and the installation competed without any problems.

 

However - I wish to use Window 7 64 Bit and not Windows 7 32 Bit.

 

Contacting Toshiba, I am told that to obtain a installation Disc for 64 Bit, I would be charged !!!!

 

I believe, that my Discs are not corrupted, or if so, the corruption must have been at the point of intaial use of teh laptop 18 months ago. Similar response from the retailer.

 

I have offered to send my Discs for examination, but this fell on deaf ears.

 

What are my rights ? Am I entitled to a 64 Bit installation Disc or will I just have to use the 32 bit system ?

[locutus]

IF you have 3 gig memory or under you will not gain anything using the 64 bit version, if you have 4gig + this will be capped at around 3 gig on 32bit OS. I would email the CEO of Toshiba UK [email protected] and tell him of this failing.

 

Personally I think their is a strong likelyhood that the 64bit has recorded to a low quality DVD, and as that was supplied by Toshiba, they should put this right.

[MaxxPower]

IF you have 3 gig memory or under you will not gain anything using the 64 bit version, if you have 4gig + this will be capped at around 3 gig on 32bit OS. I would email the CEO of Toshiba UK [email protected] and tell him of this failing.

 

Personally I think their is a strong likelyhood that the 64bit has recorded to a low quality DVD, and as that was supplied by Toshiba, they should put this right.

 

Typically the laptop manufacturer doesn't provide you with blank DVD's for creating your own recovery media, you have to provide your own. In my experience these often (almost always really) fail if you use low-quality discs (Eg, tesco own brand) and when creating recovery discs it's always best to get a high quality brand like Verbatim.

[locutus]

When I last bought a new laptop, which was 4 years ago, within the original box were 3 blank DVDs each in a plain white paper wallet in a folded booklet with instructions to create the recovery disk, and these DVDs were plain white label disks. Personally I only use Verbatim, but these even looked cheap (the burn surface looked ragged at the edges, and not a nice deep colour like Verbatim are) so it really depends on if they came in the package I guess as to who is responsible. I'd also say that the manufacturer should re-image the hard drive for free as a "gesture of goodwill" to resolve this complaint as that will be the easiest solution, and I'd expect the CEO of Toshiba to agree to this as a solution as it would cost them next to nothing, and the laptop would be back as good as new.

[lgb2100]

Contacted Toshiba, and they stated a replacement installation disc would cost £29.90.

 

A further e-mail to Toshiba, I was then sent a disc FOC, altough the media they used was poor - drive had problems reading it, and running finer around the rim of the disc, showed it to be 'very bumpy'.

 

However, several attempts later, finally managed to read the disc, and intsall Windows 7 64 Bit, back onto teh Laptop.

 

Another backup of the OS following Toshiba's instructions will be made for future use (just in case the disc they sent fails to be read)

[electron99]

You can make a clone of your hard disc, including operating system/ drivers etc using a free utility such as

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

With this you can burn the HDD image to DVD, USB stick or external drive.

 

Using Macrium you can restore you computer to factory setting within 5 to 15 minutes depending on its size.