[dirtwarrior]

I have a floppy and data is not detected. I put another drive in. Changed cables. But everytime I put a floppy in it says please insert floppy. The drive is detected in bios.
I dont use a floppy much but there are times when needed badly.
Has anyone else experienced this? How did you fix it?
Thanks

[jaclaz]

The drive is probably defective.

Read this:
http://www.accurite....oppyPrimer.html

You should try it on another motherboard, if it still does not work, you can try cleanng it:
http://dawn.thot.net/cd/149.html

Quote

Floppy Drive
Hard drives are sealed to the outside environment, so you do not have to worry about the innards. But, the floppy drive is open to the world and thus the read/write heads and other components can become dirty. Dust can make its way inside, but also residue from the disk media can, over time, become built up on the heads. A good way to clean the heads is to use alcohol to clean the read/write heads. You can also take a vacuum with an attachment and gently vacuum out the inside of the drive. This can be done right through the slot so you do not have to take the drive apart. An easier way to clean the heads is to get yourself a floppy drive cleaner kit. Following the directions, you can clean the heads by simply inserting the cleaning disk.

I should also mention drive alignment. Over time, the alignment of the floppy drive internals can drift and thus make it difficult to read disk media. The first thing you would notice is that reading disks from other PC's will be rough. It could eventually lose the ability to read its own disks. While back in the day it was worth it to align drives and pay the labour to do it, floppy drive today are very cheap and it is thus easier to just toss the drive and replace it with a new one.

jaclaz

[LLXX]

Or your floppy may be.

Have you tried formatting some other floppies in the drive?

[dirtwarrior]

The floppies that work in girlfriends puter wont work in mine. I changed cables and drives. I was thinking maybe I removed a file I need for floppy support but dont know which 1

[SilentRob]

Okay I just bought a brand new floppy drive today, and had this exact problem...

I exchanged the drive and the cable for different brands of each, and it still didn't work.

Turned out I simply had the "Drive A" setting in CMOS set to "None" -- all I had to do was change it to the 3.5" 1.44 MB 2HD Floppy Drive setting, and voila, it worked! I hope that piece of advice helps...

Also, for some reason, even though the red wire on the MB socket was aligned with those in the IDE sockets, I had to have it on the opposite side in the floppy drive socket (i.e. the red wire was on the board side rather than the door side of the drive instead of vice versa for the IDE drives) -- anyone know what's going on there?

[ripken204]

ya, check ur bios. i had a strange problem with mine, i have no floppy but in windows it said i did, so i set it to none in the bios. and when i hook up my external usb floppy it works fine.

[jaclaz]

Quote

Also, for some reason, even though the red wire on the MB socket was aligned with those in the IDE sockets, I had to have it on the opposite side in the floppy drive socket (i.e. the red wire was on the board side rather than the door side of the drive instead of vice versa for the IDE drives) -- anyone know what's going on there?

Yes, the red stripe goes on pin #1 of the connector.
Usually on the floppy it is on the OPPOSITE side as compared to HD/CD.
(but there is always a "1" near the connector)

jaclaz

[nmX.Memnoch]

ripken204, on Dec 29 2005, 09:18 PM, said:

ya, check ur bios. i had a strange problem with mine, i have no floppy but in windows it said i did, so i set it to none in the bios. and when i hook up my external usb floppy it works fine.

Windows will show that you have a floppy drive unless you disable that setting in the BIOS. This is because floppy drive controllers are "dumb" compared to PATA/SATA/SCSI controllers. I disable both the floppy controller itself and the option to tell the system what kind of floppy drives you have connected.

jaclaz, on Dec 30 2005, 08:32 AM, said:

Quote

Also, for some reason, even though the red wire on the MB socket was aligned with those in the IDE sockets, I had to have it on the opposite side in the floppy drive socket (i.e. the red wire was on the board side rather than the door side of the drive instead of vice versa for the IDE drives) -- anyone know what's going on there?

Yes, the red stripe goes on pin #1 of the connector.
Usually on the floppy it is on the OPPOSITE side as compared to HD/CD.
(but there is always a "1" near the connector)

jaclaz

The stripe almost always goes closest to the floppy drive power connector. I have seen a few *cough*Sony*cough* floppy drives where this wasn't the case though.

If the cable was incorrectly attached the activity light on the floppy would stay on all the time.

I don't have floppy drives in any of my PCs anymore...but I did pick up an external USB floppy drive for that very rare occassion where I need one. This is the one I got:

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_in...9956&pfp=SEARCH

I could've gotten a cheaper one but I needed it right away when I got it (one of those very rare, but important occassions). They weren't kidding when they said it's a 2X speed either...that's the fastest floppy drive I've ever used.

This post has been edited by nmX.Memnoch: 30 December 2005 - 11:00 AM

[HyperHacker]

I have this problem too... I've tried all manner of combinations of different drives and cables, but no matter what I do, it always acts like there's no disk in the drive. Doesn't matter if I try it in Windows or Linux or try to boot off it or what have you.

[dirtwarrior]

Me too. When I use 9x it works. When I use xp it doesnt. I may havw taken out something I need. What the strange part is BIOS sees it and it shows up as 1 of my drives but it still wont work.

[LLXX]

dirtwarrior, on Jan 2 2006, 08:04 AM, said:

Me too. When I use 9x it works. When I use xp it doesnt. I may havw taken out something I need. What the strange part is BIOS sees it and it shows up as 1 of my drives but it still wont work.

There is nothing wrong with the hardware. The problem is with the driver.

[dirtwarrior]

Anothe development. When I boot off a floppy it works, it wont work in windows. Is it still the floppy driver?

[ripken204]

well its not the drive. in windows, go to the device manager and uninstall the floppy driver, then try to reinstall it using one of the windows drivers.

[nmX.Memnoch]

If he uninstalls it and reboots it should pick it up automatically.

[ripken204]

well thats kinda what i meant, he would just have the device manager install the floppy by searching thru the windows drivers to find the best driver to use.