floppy drive not responding

GoneShootin

few weeks ago guy says to me that his floppy drive is not working anymore [DELL DEMENSION]. wouldnt recognise any floppy disk [THIS DISK IT NOT FORMATTED etc] and would hang the PC.

at the time i was too lazy to look at it and as it was new told him to send it back to DELL....

today another guy has told me similar problems only with his year old GATEWAY, the problem having started last month.

is it a virus that im looking at ? ive yet to look at the BIOS. did try SAFE MODE and was still unresponsive.

any info on it ? and best possilbe solution ? i intend to throw AVG onto it and test for viruses nehoo.

sceptre

Doubt it (not that I'm know too much about these things)

It was happening to me a bit - I left it for months (don't use the floppy drive too often), turned out the cable back to the motherboard must have been a tad loose - when I pulled it out and pushed it in again all worked well. Worth trying - won't take long (unless it's one of those nasty Dells that take twenty minutes to open)

elexes

Originally posted by sceptre
(unless it's one of those nasty Dells that take twenty minutes to open)

in my case with them it was trying to get it closed again .

seamus

Sure, test for viruses, but it just sounds like a shagged FDD IMO. When windows says 'this disk is not formatted', tell windows to then go ahead and format it (make sure you use an old/blank floppy). When it's finished, stick it in another comp and if it tells you the disk is destroyed, then the floppy is screwed. Modern floppies work with very small read head --> disk distances, so any slight damage in the drive and it becomes unusable. Tell your friend to ditch the floppy anyway, and get his hands on a 100MB zip drive.

Gaz

1: Try a few different floppy disks ...is it the same ?
2: Check in bios that the floppy drive is enabled
3: Open system and check cables are secure
4: Check cables are the right was around


If still the same there is only 2 likely causes ... Drive is dead or motherboard controller is dead ... Try a new drive, only costs a tenner or if under warrenty get them to send you one.

Very unlikely that it is a virus.

Ahhh crap, is it that obvious i used to do tech support ...... cant handle phones anymore .....urge to break things rising .... want to kill user ....... arrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhh !!!!!

Saruman

There is one thing to check with floppy problems and i dont care how tedious people think it is.. just do it.. try it in DOS!! you would be surprised how ofter windows is the cause.. or more to the point some app in windows.. anti virus is a prime culprit!! dissabling it can sometimes fix.. why? coz some wiill scan the floppy when you try to use it and interfere with it!! Thus getting messages like "disk not formatted" or "error reading drive"

Also i have seen cases where people try to save word docs to floppy and it fails but windows explorer is fine as are all other programs!

GoneShootin

1: Try a few different floppy disks ...is it the same ?
2: Check in bios that the floppy drive is enabled
3: Open system and check cables are secure
4: Check cables are the right was around

i had done all that b4 starting the thread, tho sound advice none the less.

i also tried it in DOS, and DRIVE READ ERROR. sounds like th floppy controller on the MB is shagged.

wat bothers me is that this is the 2nd time its happened in recent weeks and im wondering wat caused it on the two seperate machines....

thanks all

Saruman

eh unless i missed something.. were new drives tried? if not why jump to conclusion its the mobo controller?

GoneShootin

were new drives tried?

yep, i robbed the drive from the pc shop that iwork in and tried it. also tried my OLD drive out of a 486 and tried that.

both were unsuccessful with both existing cables and the gateway cables.

hence conclusion, sorry that i didnt mention this in last post

Spunog UIE

exact same thing happened to me. tried with new floppy drive and that. just thought the mb connection was fecked and not the cables or floppy.

So emm can you get an exteral usb floppy drive or something/?

marauder

I had a simialar issue - it was when I upgraded to Win2k on an old Dell. Haven't had time to look at it since so I just disabled it as I don't use it.. If if find out whats wrong I'll post a reply...