I have an older Toshiba laptop, a Tecra, and I want to change the order of boot devices so that it'll try to boot off a USB drive before it looks at the CDROM because I have a corrupt OS disk stuck in it. Problem is, I press f1, f8, f12, and just about every other function key I can imagine and nothing lets me get to the BIOS. Help!

It's a puzzle: is a Microsoft Windows Vista laptop with a crystal-clear 12.1-inch screen, 320GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM and a carrying weight - without the external Blu-Ray drive - of about four pounds a netbook? An ultralight notebook? A laptop? HP calls it an "Entertainment Notebook" and refers to it in press materials as "one of the thinnest, lightest notebooks in the market".

Whatever we call it, I was delighted to get my hands on one of these shiny, well-built DV2 computers that offered a very different PC experience than the usual low-budget, poorly assembled PC gear. Focused on multimedia capabilities and highly portable, the DV2 is a fast device with a terrific screen -- plenty crisp and bright enough to let you enjoy movies, even Blu-Ray disks via the external drive -- and a comfortable, solid feeling keyboard.

At $669 (with a $30 rebate that HP's currently offering as I write this review) the DV2 is not the least expensive notebook on the market and it's not even close to the cheapest notebook that HP offers, for that matter. But it's not price, it's value that counts, and that's where we get into another dilemma: would you be happy paying $700 for a multimedia laptop computer that only had a 12" screen?

I think the answer is "yes", because from my own testing, the attractive DV2 fits in quite well between cheaper, small-screen netbooks and more expensive, bigger-screen, heavier notebooks...

Help! Something abdominable has happened to my wife's Toshiba A200 Satellite laptop (model PSAFCL-00R00G, preinstalled OEM Vista Home Premium, not under the worranty anymore). Before going to the full story I'd like to mention that after my unsuccessful repair attempts the laptop is now partially functional in Save Mode, and (if you'll take me on board) the copies of its current System Infos, Administrative Events Reports, Windows Logs etc. can be sent to you.

During few last weeks either the unability to startup normally or BlueScreen crashes ("Unrecoverable hardware problems" mostly immediate after startup) made the laptop being completely unstable and unworkable. After many useless attempts I managed to boot from Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 Bootable CD. This has revealed the bad sectors on the HD's active partition, and I've reformatted it with the maximal precautions provided by Paragon application. Then I've used DriveClone 3.1 bootable CD to recover HDD from USB external drive. Unfortunately the only available DriveClone recovery image was made in December 2007.

According to all tests and repair operations available to me (including Windows chkdsk) both HD and WindowsOS are now OK but in the Normal Mode laptop still either refuses to startup or goes to BlueSceen crash during typing BIOS password. It however boots and is stable in Save Mode (but refuses to establish the internet connection in Save Mode with networking).

The partional functionality of Save Mode allowed me to find out the several current problems. According to Service Control Manager (event ID 7026) the boot-start/system-start drivers AFD, DCDisk, DfsC, eeCtrl, NetBIOS, netbt failed to start. In addition, (the event ID 5038) the image hash of the file \Device\HarddiskVolume2\Windows\System32\drivers\flbrc.sys is corrupted. The latter bothers me a lot as according to my knowledge the flbrc.sys driver provides difference between NTFS functionality in XP & Vista. At the same time, I'm unable to update those drivers in Save Mode.

There are also awful problems related to Norton Internet Security that has been installed on December 2007 Recovery Image. Firstly, any attempt to perform NIS Ful System Scan in Save Mode makes laptop crash leaving unsolved my suspicious about the current presence of malware or viruses although Windows Defender Full System Scan with December 2007 definitions did not find any malware. Secondly, NIS can be disabled or uninstalled (I'd be pleased to do the latter if you'd reanimate the beast) only in the unaccessible Normal Mode making impossible to apply another antivirus or antimalware application can be installed and used (like Combofix) in Save Mode.

This is the last point where I've given up and decided to ask for your help! Help!