OK, hopefully someone here can help me out!!

Couple weeks ago, had to install a new hard drive into Toshiba M35X-S163 due to old HD completely breaking (and by breaking i mean BROKE, not crashed!), installed new 320gb HD, but the recovery disk from Toshiba doesn't want to work, I called them first, then they said I was supposed to have 2 recovery disks, so I paid & waited a week and on Dec 24th, i received "new" disk, but it wasn't it was the SAME disk!!! So again I called them, they went around everything again, told me to call today and talk to 'case manager', so again I waste my time and they NOW want me to send in my laptop to their depot for a cost of $400 to fix!!! I was like, man i can get a new one for that amount!!!!

The issue is the recovery disk 'cycles' the recovery process, repeating the firs 2 steps over and over!! Saying do you agree? YES WARNING r u sure? YES and then it repeats itself...so i took to my local "Geek Squad" who wanted to help with costing me $$ first, thought maybe my bios was outdated and told me to get newest version for computer from Toshiba site and try that, because when it starts the recovery process it calls the DVD/CD drive Q and thinks that could be issue, well when i checked I had newest version V1.9, also she mentioned a site dband.com??? or somewhere i could download a temp operating system (process would take 8 hours) then try recovery disk, well i think she gave me the wrong site, because I couldn't even try this...

I read somewhere online that the problem could be size of new HD, mentioning something about NOT have 48bit addressing required for hard drives larger than 137gb in size since it's an IDE drive. don't know if this is it, or what the work around could be, as I wouldn't think that you couldn't update size of HD, plus finding a 60gb is not that easy, especially nowdays.

so I'm looking for some help if it's out there? WHAT TO DO???

thanks in advance!!!!!!

The hard drive size limit was an XP prior to SP1 limit of 137GB.

XP will still install but only on 137GB of the drive.

Toshiba will be proprietary XP so not much to offer there if their disk does not work.

Your other option is procuring another operating system.

Ubuntu is free:

Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu

Your other option is procuring another operating system.

Ubuntu is free:

And this is also but still in Alpha stage of release, More Windows Like/Compatible for Windows Users.
ReactOS

The nice thing about Linux though is you can run off the CD without installing to hardrive as a live environment.(live cd only).