How do I repair my recovery HDD on my Toshiba Satellite

SIW2 said:

It is a very big download.

You would be best burning it to dvd , or flash drive.

Then you have it for the future.

If you boot the dvd you will get the usual installation options.

See here:

Clean Install Windows 7

If you use that product key off the sticker, you may need to phone activate - depends on the oem .

Thank you very much!!

I am going to download the ISO tonight and run it tomorrow when I get home from work. Ill let you know how it goes.

Ok I did some more digging and this is what I found out:

The laptop came with Windows Vista.

The previous owner got a free version of windows 7 from our school acouple of years ago.

The previous owner can not find the product key or Windows 7 disk.

What should I do?? Can I simply microsoft and ask for a new product key?

They will probably say those free keys are only for qualifying students - of course, they keep using it forever, but they will only give out new ones to students.

Something along those lines, probably. If you are still at school - that may do it.

Try another product key finder and see if that does the job - a lot of useful freebies here Josh Cell Softwares

SIW2 said:

They will probably say those free keys are only for qualifying students - of course, they keep using it forever, but they will only give out new ones to students.

Something along those lines, probably. If you are still at school - that may do it.

Try another product key finder and see if that does the job - a lot of useful freebies here Josh Cell Softwares

OK so I went onto the website that you provided and I installed and ran the Advanced Token Manager. I thought maybe I had some corrupt files that where causing my laptop to run slowly.

After running the program, I rebooted and ran the ProduKey program that I had installed a couple days ago. This time it gives me the Product Key for Windows 7 but it is giving me a different Product ID. So the next thing I did was go and see the basic info of the computer and the product ID has been changed here too. Also, there is a h-link saying I have 30 days to activate windows.

Is this a bad thing??

Produkey program may be wrong - it didn't seem to work when you ran it?

Try running the other one - and see if that does it.

Not clear to me what you did - they only find the product key - they don't add any extraneous info - or at least they shouldn't.

SIW2 said:

Produkey program may be wrong - it didn't seem to work when you ran it?

Try running the other one - and see if that does it.

Not clear to me what you did - they only find the product key - they don't add any extraneous info - or at least they shouldn't.

I'm getting the same product ID number in my computer description and in the ProduKey program but it is different than the number I had before I ran the Advance Token Manager program. Is this normal? See attached for screen shots.

what other Product Key finder should I download? I looked through the website you provided a couple days ago and I couldn't find one. Maybe I was looking in the wrong page?

see attached for the program I downloaded from Josh Cell Softwares

After running this program and rebooting, My Laptop seemed to have a different Product ID number.

That program that I ran must of messed up my version of Windows somehow because I just tried to active it and got the following message.

That looks like the deafault win7 product- if so, it is the one already on the install dvd,

You then usually have 30 days to enter your purchased key.

I am not familiar with that program you used. In the screenshot it is called MBR Regenerator.

Isn't there a product key finder app on that site any more?

I will have a look.

It says

MBR Regenerator will help you to repair your OS after corrupted core files and activation problems

Not sure what that does tbh. Might be it just resets everything to default to try and fix any corruption there may have been. It doesn't seem to have done you any favours.

Did you use the Tokens manager before it ?- that looks like the product key program.

If so, and it found your key - it may be able to tell what it is, or restore it for you.


The key on laptop sticker is presumably for Vista as you have now discovered that was installed first.

Reading that, it seems a useful program :

MBR Regenerator, is a technology, to repair any system with bricked files caused by malware or other malicious programs who were able to damage the Activation System and Technologies, restoring the windows as a Fresh Install without format or lose any file

Will repair, recovery, and restore all activation system, restoring the Windows Activation Technologies [ KB971033 ] to
original state, install trial key, and able to clean boot code, rebuild tokens for full activation reset factory

What it does is fix/reset to defaults - useful if you had corruption - the author suggests possibly as a result of malware.

You can then put in your purchased product key. So you need to have that to hand first, of course.

Hopefully, one of the product key programs you used will have that for you?

You will need it now you have reset to default.