formating a laptop

hey all i'v been asked by a freind to format their Toshiba P-II laptop, is there any special preperations needed for this. they dont have any cd's that came with it (they did buy a copy of winxp). just wondering if the procedure differs from formatting a desktop system.

Thanks, Digital

EDIT, Spelling

Big problem Iv seen with laptops is that a lot of stuf IS proprietary. It could be an easy thing of booting to you Xp CD and watching it go and all is well but it could be a big mess. I would suggest that you check it out at the Toshiba web site and get specific information to that model and the target OS.

Ditto on what turd said (that just doesn't sound right! ).

One of the biggest pains in the *** is having a manager order his own laptop without consulting you and then finding out that the company's software doesn't run on the OS that's installed on the laptop. And then having to figure out how to get all the hardware on the laptop to run on an OS it wasn't really meant to be used with.

Hit Toshibas website and download ALL the drivers listed for the laptop (sometimes you can't tell exactly what hardware you have) and research how to get into the laptop's BIOS. Some laptops didn't display the keystroke to enter BIOS on bootup (sometimes you have to hold down a key AND THEN turn the laptop on) and it differed from one model to the next, and from one manufacturer to another.

thanks guys, i called Toshiba and they let me know that the particular model i had 4005cds dident have any speical requrements, everything went smoothly it even installed the expansion cards.

As for the bios, it booted sraight to windows no bios with no setup screens .

Digital