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Floppy drive issues

J

JohnCT311

n00b
Joined
Nov 1, 2004
Messages
12
Ok, this one is a doozy. I bought a Gateway 700x in about August of 2002, and the floppy drive was working fine up until about... maybe a week or so ago. I go to insert a disk, and when I double clicked the floppy drive icon in My Computer, it just said "Please insert a disk into drive A:". Well, I was none too pleased with this, so I took a trip to Staples and bought a new floppy drive; an Imation internal floppy drive. I took out the old one and put in the new one without a problem, but when I started my machine back up to test it out, it gave me the same trouble. Any ideas on what the issue might be?
 
....bad cable?

....bad power lead....??

Not much else that matters, unless it's disabled in BIOS....B.B.S.
 
I tried changing the cable, and there's power running to it. It tries reading the disk but brings up that "insert disk" error. I'll have to try checking the BIOS..
 
If it's trying to access the disk, my guess is that the BIOS is set just fine. Bad media...??

I suppose you could have somehow zorched the floppy port on the motherboard, but that would be a very rare failure mode (in my experience).

Good Luck - B.B.S.
 
I've tried several disks. I dunno if they're all bad, but that seems unlikely. As for the other option.. if the floppy port is fried, I'm guessing that would be pretty difficult, if not impossible, to replace without buying a new MB, huh?
 
affirmative will robinson. you must replace the chipset to fix that.
 
Are you sure the floppy cable is plugged in the correct way?
It will fit either way but will only work one way.
 
I'm... pretty sure. I hadn't touched the cable at all before this started happening, and I just put a new one in. The red stripe was facing the left side of the slot on the drive and the top of the slot on the MB.
 
S1nF1xx said:
Are you sure the floppy cable is plugged in the correct way?
It will fit either way but will only work one way.
Click to expand...

wrong symptom. i did this once on the comp i built in my a+ cert course. what that does is make the floppy drive do nothing but have the activity light on all the time. you don't get an error message with that.
 
are you using the same disk to test?

throw it out, get another drive, and try again. i have heard that a way to get revenge is to put a few drops of superglue on a disk's magnetic surface, which will ruin the floppy heads instantly. it's a classic revenge of the nerds sort of trick.
 
As I said:
I've tried several disks. I dunno if they're all bad, but that seems unlikely.
Click to expand...
I don't have enough enemies who would break into my dorm room and tamper with my hardware, and I always lock my door, jeez. Plus, how would that happen with a brand new drive that wasn't even taken out of the box until last night?
 
::me dumb@$$, you geek:: point taken.

i had considered it unlikely to begin with.

could be 2 bad floppy drives in a row.
 
starhawk said:
::me dumb@$$, you geek:: point taken.

i had considered it unlikely to begin with.

could be 2 bad floppy drives in a row.
Click to expand...

Stranger things have happened...
 
Well, if the Mobo Floppy controller is FUBAR, you might consider a USB Floppy drive. That way you can store it when you're not using it, and it's less likely to go bad from excess dust, etc. Just my 2 cents.
 
....you could luck out and find a PCI floppy card. I've seen 'em. I'm not sure if they are bootable, though....would be card / BIOS specific.

Good Luck - B.B.S.
 
I had a similiar issue with my daughter's pc, tried a new drive, cable, checked the power lead, nothing. Just for the heck of it I formatted the computer with the new floppy drive installed in it and it worked! I was running Windows xp at the time.No idea why it wouldn't accept the new drive until I formatted. Perhaps some windows file was corrupt.
 
I had been considering reformatting lately, but only as a last resort. I haven't had the time to, but I guess I'll just have to find some time to get around to it.
 
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