Before I get to the problems I encountered and the solution - a simple question might be why I did not just use the disc that came with the machine? The problem (and perhaps related to what I encountered below) is that Toshiba does not provide any physical Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 disc. Instead they provide a hidden partition on the drive for which you can burn CDs or DVD copies of the software. So, then why not use that? I did... I backed it all up and then thought I would use the restore discs. The problem is that the restore disc does exactly that, restores the system just as it was shipped - complete with all of the bloated software I wanted to get rid of. In short - Toshiba provides no way (confirmed by their technical support) to do a clean install of the OS only. If you are a person that likes to have your system clean and lean, installing the bloat and then uninstalling is not going to be the preferred solution. For example, I do not want to have any remnants of a Yahoo! toolbar nor virus scan and security software trials because things are probably left behind. Either the registry has dangling entries or the file system has a few extra files left behind. All of this becomes especially important when doing development work - but I digress, now on to the solution.

After discovering Toshiba did not ship a clean OS install disc, I was lucky enough to have a licensed copy of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005. I assumed it would be as simple as plopping in the DVD and installing. I would not be posting anything if this were true... instead there were problems because the M400 has SATA RAID. When I attempted to install, no hard drive could be located to actually install upon. I realized Toshiba had a driver available for this purpose and in fact the instructions stated to copy the file on to a floppy drive for use during install. This raised my curiosity since the M400 does not have a floppy drive...

I started the process over and pressed F6, assuming I would be able to simply copy the drivers on something like a USB drive or CD and continue from there. This is when I found out that Windows XP does not allow for the install of these drivers from any location other than the A: drive. After fumbling around trying to trick the machine into thinking the USB drive was a floppy and altering the BIOS, I decided to spring for an external USB floppy drive.

I called around and purchased a Sony external USB floppy. I restarted the install process and pressed F6. Success! I was able to install the SATA RAID driver and proceed through the next stages. I happily watched the various files flood the system and then reached the screen to choose the install location. I chose the only drive on the system (the c drive). I was then prompted to format the drive and of course did. FAILURE!

What? This is where a tricky part comes into play. As noted, the floppy drive was successfully used after pressing the F6 button... but when it came to formatting, I received one of two responses: an error stating Windows was unable to format the drive and perhaps the drive was damaged OR to insert the driver into the floppy drive.

The first error occurred because Windows was no longer able to use the driver, which makes sense if it is on a drive that is to be formatted. The second message indicated something larger. Clearly the A drive had worked before when pressing F6 but then it stopped being recognized. It ends up that Windows XP (all editions) is only able to recognize three USB floppy drive types:

1. Mitsumi
2. Y-E Data; Sony part number 09K9835
3. TEAC; IBM option part number 27L4226, FRU 05K9283

I happened upon this Microsoft Knowledge Base entry and article. Simply put, if you do not have one of the three models indicated, you are out of luck. As luck would have it (or not in this case), none of these models seem to be available in places like CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City or any other brick and mortar business I could find. In other words, I would have to order one from somewhere which also meant waiting and unuable machine.

Frustrated and impatient, I thought there had to be something else that I could do such as slipstreaming the drivers into the Windows installation. Long story short - it did not work. You can read an article here and here about slipstreaming drivers, hotfixes etc. into Windows. I also tried the nLite tool in case I had improperly done something. The tool worked fine but the Toshiba driver did not work for whatever reason. The tool itself is easy to use and seems to be valuable for doing a custom installation (assuming you have a floppy drive).

So what is the solution? I found this unbranded USB floppy drive from Geeks.com. While the part number indicated it was going to be the IBM model listed, the one I received was produced by Mitsumi which means it is compatible.

So in the end, that was a long story and a lot of hours spent trying to get Windows installed without a native floppy drive. Save yourself the time I spent by going out and getting the drive I linked to (or any of the three models listed here). A parting sidenote - Windows Vista Beta 2 installed just fine, without any drivers or floppy needed; I have been told there is built in support for most of the common SATA and RAID systems.

Ben

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