Floppy drive fails....

[walks]

Hmm, seems Ive been using this form quite a bit lately. Anywho, I just recently discovered that my friend had a virus on his computer. I ended up having to format the "C" drive thinking I could use Windows boot up disk to reinstall windows 98. However, for some odd reason neither the floppy drive or CD-Rom are being detected. I went into the CMOS setup and put it on Auto detect and still nothing, Im thinking I might have screwed something up in there. It was working before.....but now its not.

Can someone pleeeeeeeease tell me how I would go about getting the floppy and CD-Rom detectable.

Thanx again

Walks

 

[jdrake]

You can set the floppy to 1.44mb in CMOS and then under a different screen - Advanced maybe (depends on bios)you should see boot order options (First boot device = , second boot...etc..)The floppy should be set to first. If the bios is not detecting the CD or floppy and you did not go into the case and change any cables you may have some issues. In the long run it would be worth trying a new floppy cable making sure to hook it up correctly (red stripe to #1 on floppy connection -or to ARROW). If none of this works you may be looking at a new MB. You cannot upgrade or flash the bios or boot to a floppy to reinstall. One other thing you could try would be to chhose "USE SAFEST\RELIABLE SETTINGS. It is usually an option on the main bios screen and will set the bios to just the basics. You will see another called USE OPTIMAL SETTING and this is designed to let the bios use more advanced settings but is not as reliable.

 

[edfair]

And the floppy controller should not be disabled. And the drive swap shouldn't be enabled.
Best to have seek on boot so you can hear the floppy.
Drive led should light during post. Constant led indicates ribbon cable is backwards.
Then of course is the possibility that the drive is bad. Or the boot disk. Do some swapping around to verify the disk.
CD is another , totally unrelated, problem. 98 boot disk will handle about 95% of the cds in the marketplace. You may have one of the 5%. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[walks]

It seems I was a little stupid before, I read things wrong. It was detecting the CD-Rom at startup but it wasnt detecting the HD or the Floppy. I went into the CMOS setup and choose Primary Master to Auto Detect and low and behold it detected the hard drive. Now I believe the floppy is working, as the light comes on however every floppy disk Ive used its giving me a message "Invalid Floppy Disk, replace the disk and press any key"

I know for a fact this floppy disk works on other computers cause I checked it on mine and just used it to reinstall windows on another computer.

as for the floppy seek, its enabled and the swap floppy is disabled.

Any other help would be greatly appriciated

Walks

 

[jdrake]

Sounds like you may have a bad floppy or floppy cable. Its amazing that sometimes they just DIE

 

[edfair]

What capacity selected in CMOS?
If the CD detects you may be able to reinstall without the floppy. Check to see if you have boot from cd capability. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[walks]

Tried installing off of the CD but gave me the same error message "Invalid Floppy Disk" Think that could have anything to do with the hard drive?

 

[edfair]

Floppy drive or floppy controller is bad, assuming the right density is selected in CMOS.
What boot order is selected in CMOS? If one choice is CDROM try it to load from cd.
Floppy failure and HDD failures are not related unless the controllers are on an expansion card, where they could possibly be related.
If you get the floppy error, it is an indication that everything in front of it in the boot order has failed to detect an operating system, and the floppy is the last thing in the boot order. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[walks]

I tried both boot from the "A" drive and "CD-Rom". Nothing pops up when it comes on the A drive, and when I tried the CD-Rom I got this error message

"Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM: Failure"

Im assuming now for sure the floppy drive is either damaged or the cable is bad. Ill try a new cable and see what happens but Im not sure why it wouldnt load from the Windows CD. I wish I could just throw the computer in the trash but......I cant, my friend needs it.

Anywho once again Im open to suggestions.

Walks

 

[tep0583]

You could also remove the drive from your friend's computer and set it up in your computer on either the secondary channel or slaved to your primary drive. You could then transfer the win98 directory from your computer's CDROM (or from the harddrive if you keep it locally) rightyour friend's drive. You will format it with the /s option to make the drive bootable first. You can then put the HD back into your friend's computer and boot from the harddrive and run setup from there. It would get you around all those annoying floppy/CDROM problems....