A:Drive Error

[spool]

Hello all,

I'm working on a HP Pavilion 450n computer. I have this problem, when I turn it on I get a blank screen and all the fans run at a high RPM. I took the Graphics card out and replaced it. It does the same thing. So I disconnected all hardware one by one.

I found out that it is the Floppy drive that is causing the problem. When the floppy cable is removed from the board and power cable is removed the fans run at normal speed and I get this American Megatrends screen. At the bottom it says A: Drive Error, Press <F1> for Setup, <F2> to Continue. I press F2 and it boots into the OS and everything works fine. So I replaced the drive and cable and every thing worked fine, no A: Drive Error, normal fan speed and boots right to OS. I shut it down restart same problem. I replaced the power supply, same problem. It will only boot to the OS if the Floppy drive is not connected and pressing F2 from that American Megatrends screen. If I reconnect the drive it will boot normal once. I uninstalled the drivers for the controller and drive and forced it to upate it still has the same problem.

I went over to HP's site and updated everything that this computer needed. It had a BIOS update and I did that also. The BIOS update and the others did not help to get rid of this problem.

One more thing I went into setup and disabled the floppy drive so it would by pass it and that did not fix it.

I'm out of fixes. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks, spool

Don't argue with an idiot, he will bring you down to his level and beat you with his experience.

 

[ski]

Make sure the FD and its cable work on another system.

If they're ok, then the MB's FD controller may be bad.
You can install a PCI FD controller card for a few $ to see if that's the cause.

 

[spool]

ski,

Thanks for the replay. Sorry I haven't gotten back till now. The problem was with the case's On/Off switch.

spool

Don't argue with an idiot, he will bring you down to his level and beat you with his experience.

 

[stevenriz]

Sounds good. I was going to suggest something that I found in one of out IBM servers. When the system is first booted all the fans run fast until the system can detect the system is running cool enough to slow them down. Once the system was booted, all was ok. On the same note, the fans automatically ran fast when the system was collecting dust and was heating up. So once I cleaned out the power supplies and case from dust, the fans ran normally.... Another reason fro fast fans in my particular case was when one of the power supplies failed or was disconnected, if you have more then one PS that is.....
steve