ReactOS on Toshiba A135-S4527
Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 8:43 pm
For years I've tried most releases on real hardware. 0.4.10 was the first release I could run it for a while without BSOD. But if I tried more than solitaire, It'd crash. That changed with 0.4.11.
After trying to install it on a few laptops without success, I discovered it ran reasonably well on this Toshiba. I couldn't get usb drives or ethernet to work out of the box. So I created a separate partition and put the windows driver pack on it. That allowed me to install some drivers including ethernet. From there I was able to install a couple drivers from the Toshiba site.
It's quite buggy by normal standards but remarkably stable for ReactOS Here's a list of some of the issues in case you have this laptop and are considering giving it a try. By the way I am creating this post from this installation.
1) Couldn't get wireless working. Not an issue for me.
2) USB is buggy. If a mouse is plugged in on boot it crashes. Using a usb mouse seems to crash this system after a while.
3) There are 7 drivers showing ? in device manager. Most are ACPI.
4) AC97 driver installed but no sound device is recognized.
5) Adding software at random causes the machine to lockup or BSOD. When this happens and a hard reset is required, the disk gets messed up and soon enough I have to run fsck via gparted live.
6) If a usb disk is inserted on boot, it seems to hang trying to boot from it. After boot usb disk recognition is spotty.
Even though this partial list look bad, it's stable enough on this laptop I've added Reactos to my daily rotation: Linux, Icaros, Haiku, and now Reactos. However, it's definitely not ready for the faint of heart.
After trying to install it on a few laptops without success, I discovered it ran reasonably well on this Toshiba. I couldn't get usb drives or ethernet to work out of the box. So I created a separate partition and put the windows driver pack on it. That allowed me to install some drivers including ethernet. From there I was able to install a couple drivers from the Toshiba site.
It's quite buggy by normal standards but remarkably stable for ReactOS Here's a list of some of the issues in case you have this laptop and are considering giving it a try. By the way I am creating this post from this installation.
1) Couldn't get wireless working. Not an issue for me.
2) USB is buggy. If a mouse is plugged in on boot it crashes. Using a usb mouse seems to crash this system after a while.
3) There are 7 drivers showing ? in device manager. Most are ACPI.
4) AC97 driver installed but no sound device is recognized.
5) Adding software at random causes the machine to lockup or BSOD. When this happens and a hard reset is required, the disk gets messed up and soon enough I have to run fsck via gparted live.
6) If a usb disk is inserted on boot, it seems to hang trying to boot from it. After boot usb disk recognition is spotty.
Even though this partial list look bad, it's stable enough on this laptop I've added Reactos to my daily rotation: Linux, Icaros, Haiku, and now Reactos. However, it's definitely not ready for the faint of heart.