I did some reading since my previous post. It seems that in the 2nd XP installation the Toshiba utilities can't read the DMI information stored in the EEPROM, containing unit model and serial. This is evidenced by the fact that the Toshiba PC Diagnostics Utility reports "Unknown" for the serial, model etc.

Therefore a third question emerges, what is missing from the new XP installation that allows reading the DMI info? I guess I have to investigate all the services running in the original XP installation, but my bet is that the utilities that install these services are not publicly available.

The very same utilities install perfectly fine under Windows 7 (yes, I made another partition and installed Windows 7 there). This means that either Win7 has in-built tools reporting DMI information, or that the Toshiba 7 installers don't check for it.

Still hoping for some clues from the community.

I apologise for the long post, but I am afraid that sooner or later other users of NB200 will (stumble on the same issues.)

Dear Timox, thank you for this interesting scenario, and let me offer my first thoughts. I have already seen this theme of installation sequencing in the forums, and my sequence was about the same - first non-Toshiba stuff and then Toshiba stuff.

You and other forum members say that the order is "very important" and of course I'd like to know why the order is important. A possible answer would be that each utility expects something else already having been installed. If this was the case, i.e. that users should follow a linear sequence of installation, wouldn't it be very easy for the developers to embed error messages in each utility like "please install utility X first and retry installation"?. In the same line of thought, developers could have bundled everything in one big executable and offer it for use in clean installation scenarios. If the "why" of the specific sequence is not stated explicitly, the "importance" of installation sequence still remains in the realm of magic.

Having said all that, I deleted the windows installation and started anew.

Non-Toshiba stuff in the beginning of your list were ok (I do them the same way for some 15 years now).

ConfigFree was the first in your list to misbehave, issuing the infamous in these forums message "This program only works on a Toshiba System". When I saw this I knew I was doomed. This error a1lone is sufficient for me to claim that the "importance of installation order" is a myth, and that this and the other Toshiba utilities listed below do not recognise my machine.

Here are my results:

TOSHIBA Configfree - This program only works on a Toshiba System

On reboot, and on any reboot, Configfree presents the same message.

TOSHIBA Hotkey - The serial number is invalid.

TOSHIBA Hardware setup - The serial number is invalid.

Toshiba Zooming utility - OK

Toshiba Zooming utility driver - OK

TOSHIBA Password Utility - The serial number is invalid

Toshiba Fn-esse - OK

TOSHIBA Accessibility - The serial number is invalid

TOSHIBA Touchpad On_Off - The serial number is invalid

TOSHIBA Power Saver - OK

TOSHIBA Power Saver Driver - OK

On reboot (and in all subsequent reboots) I get
"A fatal error has occurred. The program has terminated. code: 0x47F

PC Diagnostics - OK

Running PCDiag gives the following:

Model Name: Unknown
Part Number: Unknown
Serial Number: Unknown
Serial Number: Unknown
OS Version: Unknown
BIOS Version: Unknown
Physical Memory: Unknown

Testing CPU and Memory gives PASS results.

SD Memory Utilities - OK

HDD Protection - OK

3G, Driver RF, Wireless manager & Network Device ID Registry Setting Tool - not applicable for NB200-13J

TOSHIBA Value Added Logical device - NOT in your list and from what I read, very vital for NB200, does not install at all, as if the file were damaged. I had to manually decompress setup.exe and run the resulting DPInst.exe, after which TVALD says it installed fine.

This completes the clean installation saga.

Now, checking the Services, only Toshiba Bluetooth is listed.

Checking running processes with Sysinternals Process Explorer, I see the following Toshiba-related running processes:

CFSvcs - Service of Configfree (supposedly "only working for Toshiba systems" and not mine!!!)
ThpSrv.exe - TOSHIBA HDD Protection Service
TosBtSrv.exe - TOSHIBA Bluetooth Service
ZoomingHook.exe - TOSHIBA Zooming utility Hotkey Hook
Smoothview.exe - Smoothview (by TOSHIBA)
TosBTMng.exe and under it another 6 Bluetooth-related processes

Preliminary conclusions and alternative theories:

1. My windows may be missing some service(s), prerequisite for the Toshiba utilities, or there is a specific mandatory locale/configuration to be used when installing them, or MSDN OSs are not compatible, etc etc XP-related dark matter.

2. NB200-13J is not compatible with the utilities.

3. My EEPROM contents were somehow corrupt (from what I read many Tosh laptops suffer from this) and I need to reprogram them with the DMI Update Utility (see e.g. http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/7011-toshiba-notebook-dmi-updates-for-wrong-error-message/) or with special startup disks (from what I read, not yet issued for the NB200 series)

4. I am missing a non-public Toshiba utility/driver, provided only to major vendors (and not to end customers) in order to customise their windows pre-installations.

5. Some conspiracy theory, like the one saying that Toshiba Corporation succumbs to pressures from Microsoft Corporation to poison or kill XP in laptops/netbooks (...)

6. I am using the wrong fairy stardust.

Next step: I'll compare the services and processes running on the original windows with the ones on the clean installation and see what is missing.

In the meantime, any more ideas would be greatly appreciated... (to be continued!)