how to enter the BIOS of a Toshiba 440CDT laptop

power up the computer holding down the esc key, and then when you get the error message, push the f1 key.

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On most to enter BIOS try holding down one of the following keys when booting up. F1, F2, Delete, or Control. A few have different keys for this, such as some compaq's used F10. 

Check out these sites:

http://www.pwcrack.com/BIOS/bios.html 

http://www.itsecurity.com/asktecs/jun4102.htm 

http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive/isn/2002/02/msg00125.html