Floppy Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nick Bradbury
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Nick Bradbury

Hi

I am having problems with a Floppy Drive on my PC. On inserting a disk (I
know disk is OK) the LED on the drive does not come on, when I try to open a
file on the disk the drive LED comes on and stays on, windows displays the
hour glass icon but the windows cannot access the floppy disk. I then have
to end the program with a message "My Computer is not responding". I have
checked Device Manager and there doesn't seem to be a problem with the
installation, I have tried to update driver but XP says that the driver is
up to date.

I have built the PC myself (1st attempt) and all other devices work OK, I
have Windows XP Pro installed and all Sevice Packs etc are installed and up
to date. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Many thanks


Nick
 
In Nick Bradbury <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:
Hi

I am having problems with a Floppy Drive on my PC. On inserting a
disk (I know disk is OK) the LED on the drive does not come on, when
I try to open a file on the disk the drive LED comes on and stays on,
windows displays the hour glass icon but the windows cannot access
the floppy disk. I then have to end the program with a message "My
Computer is not responding". I have checked Device Manager and there
doesn't seem to be a problem with the installation, I have tried to
update driver but XP says that the driver is up to date.

I have built the PC myself (1st attempt) and all other devices work
OK, I have Windows XP Pro installed and all Sevice Packs etc are
installed and up to date. If anyone has any suggestions please let me
know.
Many thanks


Nick
Click to expand...

I'll take a stab at it... Open your BIOS Setup Utility on boot and disable
three mode floppy support.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/

Please note that if you're reading this in a browser and the domain is
not owned by Microsoft then this work is being used without permission.

Access MS Newsgroups :
http://kgiii.info/windows/all/general/msnewsgroups.html
 
I'll take a stab, too. Flip the IDE cable over....

(On the grey IDE cable there should be a red line that denotes the 0 pin
orientation, but it's not always there or correct.)

I've had cables without tabs and floppy drives with open or closed slot
orientations. Flipping the cable over almost always works, never hurts to
try....
 
However, I've had a motherboard seemingly lose floppy in this way before,
for no good reason either. Tried the cable and swapped it, different drive,
still just runs then gives up. Who knows what chip it is!

Brian
 
Nick Bradbury wrote:
|
| Hi
|
| I am having problems with a Floppy Drive on my PC. On inserting a
| disk (I know disk is OK) the LED on the drive does not come on, when
| I try to open a file on the disk the drive LED comes on and stays on,
| windows displays the hour glass icon but the windows cannot access the
| floppy disk. I then have to end the program with a message "My Computer
| is not responding". I have checked Device Manager and there doesn't
| seem to be a problem with the installation, I have tried to update driver
but
| XP says that the driver is up to date.
|
| I have built the PC myself (1st attempt) and all other devices work OK,
| I have Windows XP Pro installed and all Sevice Packs etc are installed
| and up to date. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.
|
| Many thanks
|
|
| Nick
|
|

Hi Nick -

In addition to the above ..

Does your floppy cable have three connectors (or sets of connectors)?

If it does, the motherboard connector is obvious. The other end of the
cable is for the A:\ drive. The connectors in the middle are for the now
all but obsolute B:\ drive.

If you have the drive connected to the middle connector, the symptoms will
be as you describe: the lights are on, but nobody's home.

Jef
 
I had the same thing happen. It took 2 different drives before I found 1
that worked properly. Maybe XP just doesnt like floppy drives. Who knows
but I did find one that worked...eventually!
 
I would buy a new floppy drive and install it. For a mere $5 it is not
worth wasting any time over a it. Sonny drives are quite reliable
despite recent fiasco about their rootKits for copy protecting CDs.

I refurbish lots of old computers donated by universities and 99% of
them have bad floppies. When I install new drives everything works
fine.

The refirbished machines are given away to Not-For-Profit organizations
such as Charities in the UK.

hth
 
Thanks for all your replies. I installed another drive and it worked no
problems

Cheers

Nick
 
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