Sunday, October 11, 2009

The dreaded TOS1901 missing device on Toshiba Laptops (Fixed)


Since Windows Vista 64-Bit was introduced, many Toshiba laptop owners have been left with a single Unknown Device in Device Manager. This device is the Firmware Linkage Driver. While this device does not appear to affect system performance; it is annoying to have one Unknown Device in your Control Panel. The Firmware Linkage Driver  has the Hardware ID’s of TOS1901, *TOS1901 and ACPI/TOS1901.



Eventually, it was discovered that this particular device was installed as a part of the Toshiba Supervisor Password Utility. This SHOULD have resulted in a simple fix but Toshiba made this utility locked to a specific set of Serial Numbers.* This meant that if your laptop had a serial number that wasn’t in this set, you were out of luck. The program would refuse to install and the driver would not load. I tried to get an image of this, but not that I have the Firmware Linkage Driver installed, I can't seem to get it to bring up an error.

For several years now, I would randomly try and find that driver. Well, this evening I successfully found and updated it. The process was so  simple I have been kicking myself. The installer is browseable, if you use the right programs. So long story short, I was able to extract the Firmware Linkage Driver from the install file. See the image below, showing the driver installed on my Toshiba M115 running Windows 7 64-bit Professional.






Now here are the drivers for you:
Download Driver  - XP (unknown if only 32 bit or if XP64 works as well), Vista (32 and 64 bit), Server 2003 (unknown if only 32 bit or if 64bit works as well), Win7 (32 and 64 bit).

Please let me know if this helped you out. Also, please report other operating systems that these drivers DO install on (ie Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, XP64, Server 2003 64 bit, etc.)


21 comments:

  1. Haha, thanks. I'm glad I could help someone out.

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  2. Wow, I was tearing my hair out trying to find this last unknown device (new Win7 Pro installation on old Toshiba laptop). Now, if I could just find some hacked Intel 915 graphics drivers that enable Aero, I would be in heaven.

    Thanks!

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  3. Thanks for the driver man, you're God in person! = )

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  4. I've installed the "Value added package" from Toshiba driver update site & it has solved the problem..

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  5. Thanks for posting this PedroDaGr8.

    I installed Windows 7 x64 late last year and like many had the same annoying "Unknown Device". After spending ages doing various Google searches and contacting Toshiba I was resolved to disabling it (like you say, it doesn't "seem" to do any harm).

    My Toshiba laptop came with 2GB RAM (upgradable to 4GB) and Vista x86. I went for this model as it supports 4GB but what Toshiba didn't say, was they don't provide drivers for this model for Windows x64. After sending several e-mails asking how I was supposed to get 4GB RAM with Windows x86 and getting nowhere (Toshiba didn't want to know), I gave up. Their response was that you can install 4GB RAM with Vista x86 and "what's the problem only being able to use 3.2GB of it?". Obviously not answer I was happy with.

    Like you I discovered Supervisor Password Utility was the key and like you, discovered it refused to install on Windows x64 (Windows Vista x86 or Windows 7 x86 isn't a problem). I didn't know it was serial number locked though (Why?).

    Only the other day I finally fixed this by installing Driver Easy (drivereasy.com), which installed the Vista x64 Firmware Linkage Driver (v1.0.0.3) but downloading your link, the Windows 7 x64 driver is newer (v1.0.0.6).

    When installing Windows 7 x64, I literally just needed two additional chipset drivers. The Firmware Linkage Driver and a Flash Media Driver (which I managed to install the Flash Media x64 driver from another model, this time not serial number locked).

    It would be so easy for Toshiba to create a Windows Vista x64 subset on the download page for my model (and clearly yours too). If we've worked it out, it's obvious some Toshiba technical support person knows this too!

    As the laptop was supplied with Vista x86, instead they flatly refused to help me. It looks like Toshiba North/South American support, are are useless as Toshiba European support.

    Thanks for taking the time to post this again.

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  6. Over a year later, but just wanted to express my appreciation for this. It took only a few seconds to diagnose and fix this problem thanks to your post. Many thanks to you.

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  7. Works like a charm on Vista Home Premium 32 bit....you are a God! Thanks dude.

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  8. Thank you very much! Its working great on Windows Vista Ultimate.

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  9. You're brilliant! Even with all this time passed there wasn't an easily found solution

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  10. Great, after 2 years finally no more unknown devices in my windows 7 Toshiba A100..

    Thanks for posting this

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  11. Hehe just checked back here. Life changed direction for a while. Glad that everyone is getting helped by it!

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  12. Hello, I appreciate that a fix exist for this issue. Unfortunately, the file seems to be down and I'm unable to download the file. Are there any mirrors where I can download the file and fix this problem?

    Thank you.

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