What is confusing is that you have done all these clean installs & have the same problems.

A clean install of XP should Format/wipe your hard drive.

I wonder what is on the external drive? Have you scanned it for problems?

When you reinstall XP are you disconnecting the external drive?

If not I would try that first. Perhaps your problems are on that drive.

If you choose the BIOS upgrade you will need to positivly ID your board.

Hi

Laptop drive has all operating system. External drive has all other progs and data files.

When reformating/reinstalling nothing - apart from the power lead - was connected to laptop and virtually as the reinstall of win xp finished so calculator opened up!

As stated all other apps which open are Windows related, Media Player, Windows Search facility, Help and Support, whatever default browser/email program I opt for, etc etc. Random letters or numbers can appear even when I am not typing!!

Yet the same Win XP disc has been used for both laptops and the other one is fine?

The auto typing & program loading are very indicative of a virus.

With all the reinstalling my only theory is that there is still data on your hard drive; most likely a hidden recovery partition established by Toshiba.

Have you tried these 2 scans:

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

http://www.microsoft.com/security/ma...e/default.mspx

Toshiba's manual is here:

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/t...ceghdgngdgmn.0

I will continue browsing for the recovery possibilities.

Hi

Firstly, thanks for sticking with this. I ran both virus scans, nothing showed up.

I went thru the manual, tried looking for detailed spec and could not find exact match. Details for my pc via BelArc Advisor are Toshiba Equium A60, none of the part numbers matched up?

How does your drive show up in Disk Management?

Start/Run/ diskmgmt.msc

Just to clarify: 1 drive? 1 partition? What is the size of that partition?
From what I see the Toshiba Equium A60 has a 40gig drive.
Unfortunatly Toshiba no longer lists Equium A60's on its' site.
I take it that there is no longer a warranty?

Hi

Shows as Drive C: Disc 0 Layout: Partition Type: Basic.

External shows as Drive D: Disc 1 Partiton Basic.

Should be a warranty, only bought it a few months ago. Why????

Forgot Capacity : 37.25GB....

At the end of my shift here tonight but I will speculate that the other 2.75

(40-37.25) is Toshiba's Recovery Partition.

The why is: The recovery disk provided by Toshiba should insure that you can recover your computer to factory condition.

Technically using another XP disk would probably void that warranty but I just thought it worth mentioning.

It is a strange balance that has been initiated by mixing these XP CD's.

By all rights you should have the ability to re-establish factory settings via the Toshiba Recovery Disk.

There is no telling what was done by trying to implement a full version XP CD.

Again my theory is that there is lingering issues on that drive.

Which leads me to only 3 conclusions:

1. Restore Toshiba via Recovery disk (was there a floppy provided? Often hidden partitions are accessable thru a floppy boot disk) warranty (if still valid).

2. Take the risk to totally format the drive with a clean install of XP. (Usually would require a new product key/ i.e. new version of XP).

3. I am too tired to think

Hi

Thanks for getting back to me, hope you get some quality rest! Will try over the holiday weekend to sort out pc, with recovery or reinstall. But will keep an eye on the forum in case you think of anything else.

No floppy, just CD.