Any signs of water in the fuel system? It's worth going into the carb. Verify also that the vent in the fuel cap is open as well.

Walt I drained the oil last night and it was clean with no signs of any fragments. I also did try and set the governor shaft at the farthest most clockwise setting and setting the governor arm at full throttle. By doing so the engine would not start, it always starts on the 1st or second pull. I then moved the governor shaft and arm to the farthest counter clockwise position and it started on the first pull, however, still racing. In desperation, I tried moving the governor shaft to the counter clockwise position and adjusted the governor arm so that it was mid throttle, same result, races. Then tried setting it at it's slowest throttle speed, still races. One thing is for sure, the governor shaft must be in the counter clockwise position, otherwise it would race even faster. The spring and linkage all work freely so I'm at my wits end of what is causing this. I suspect it's internal governor issues. Fisher40037 Thanks for your suggestion regarding the throttle plate screw, pulled the carb and everything is fine.

Yes, 31P777. We now need to consider 2 things that could be affecting this problem. First, when the engine does its "crank a bit" act...........do you mean it acts like it wants to crank but just moves slightly and then stops turning? If you wait a minute it will repeat that? and it might finally catch on and run, sometimes? If that is what it is doing, I suggest that the engine is probably past due for its recommended annual valve adjustment. Have the valves ever been adjusted in the time you have owned the tractor? But, if the action you are seeing/hearing produces a "rapid fire clicking noise" from the starter solenoid for a few tries and then finally does nothing............I suspect that the battery is not being recharged when the tractor is operated. If recharging with a battery charger, or boosting from a good battery produces a dependable cranking, that sort of points toward a problem in the engine charging system. I see that the tractor has a manually engaged PTO system. If there was an electric PTO clutch you would also be complaining that the deck would not stay engaged, and that would be a symptom to weigh in on the non charging scenario. It is real easy to determine whether the charging output is OK. All you need to do is read the battery voltage while the engine IS NOT running and write down the voltage on paper. Battery voltage at this point should read at least 12.3 volts and might even read 13 volts if it has been charged recently. Next, start the engine and run it at full throttle. After running for a minute (and while it's still running at high RPM) check the battery voltage again and write down the voltage on paper. The voltage should read at least 13.7 volts and hopefully as high as 14.3 or so. If you do not observe at higher voltage at max RPM compared to the not running battery voltage, your charging system is defective.

Your Toshiba should have come with recovery Cd's or DVDs and will allow you to reinstall the system very easy back to just like factory new should something go drastically wrong. Plus you should be able to load individual componente too - when you start it you will have some options on what do you want to do. My Toshiba with Vista has the Recovery Environment and all needed windows files/drivers on a hidden drive partition and amazingly when you really screw up something to a non start-able state the Toshiba will automatically fix the boot/startup process without you needing to do a thing, for many if not 'almost' all startup problems. Plus on F8 window you should see 'Repair my PC' which runs the automatic startup fixit which checks things and fixes. Of course if you lose hard drive access and then it would be nice to have that bootable CD ravencraven linked to burn the recovery environment to CD/DVD so you can hopefully fix things, should you delete your boot-loader or something that makes the hdd lost.