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help I cant get my floppy drive to work

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glimmer

Registered
Joined
Sep 3, 2001
Location
NYC, USA
I have switch the cables, switched the floppy drive, flip the cables, and switched the power lead. Nothing has worked. All I get when I try to access the drive is a prompt that states:
"The disk in drive A is not formatted, would you like to format it?"

I am using a p4 1.7 / Abit TH7II/ Windows 98

Any help would be great, I just finished this system and this is really holding things up.:mad:
 
I'm sure you checked, but are the settings in the bios correct ? ie: 3-1/2" 1.44 FD etc.

Did you enable "FD seek on boot up" ? When enabled you should hear your FD start and the heads will reset. Just an easy way to see if the comp is talking to the FD.

Prior to the "This disk is not formatted etc etc message does the drive run and try to read the disk?

Do you have the jumpers (if there are any) on the FD in the right place?

Where is the drive plugged in to, the middle connector or the end? It should be the last plug, the one with the little twist in the cable.
 
LimeyGreg said:
I'm sure you checked, but are the settings in the bios correct ? ie: 3-1/2" 1.44 FD etc.

Did you enable "FD seek on boot up" ? When enabled you should hear your FD start and the heads will reset. Just an easy way to see if the comp is talking to the FD.

Prior to the "This disk is not formatted etc etc message does the drive run and try to read the disk?

Do you have the jumpers (if there are any) on the FD in the right place?

Where is the drive plugged in to, the middle connector or the end? It should be the last plug, the one with the little twist in the cable.

1)Yes I did enable FD seek on boot up, I did hear it doing somthing on start-up

2)Yes the drive runs and tries to read the disk before the message comes up

3) As far as I can tell there are no jumpers either of the drives that I tried out.

4) the drive is pluged into last plug with the twist on it.

Could this be a problem with the motherboard?
This has not work since I built the system a couple of days ago.
Thanks for your help
 
It's not letting me format the disk, says disk is damaged.
I know this isn't true because I did it from a couple of different disks.
It almost seems like a driver issue but I have reistalled the driver.:confused:

I thinking of removing the OS completely and starting over.
Is this a good Idea? If so what's the best way to do this?
 
I don't believe this is a software problem. It seems that the drive may be bad. I had the same thing happen and once I replaced the drive problem solved.........
 
By nothing you mean
It reacts exactly like the original drive.



r_wesleyjr said:
Does the light on the drive go off after boot up?

Are you using the cable that came with the mobo?

Can you see the drive in my computer?
1) Yes
2) Yes, and I have tried other cables
3) Yes
 
This is strange. I have plugged the power plug in upside down b4 and got some weird probs. Usually the light stays on when you do this though.

How old is the mobo or bios update?
 
The mother board is brand new. It is a 478 socket so it can't have been around too long.
If it is the motherboard how do determine this definitively?
I would like to completely clear the OS but I am not sure how to do it without the floppy drive availible (start fresh) maybe this will make a difference.


I just got off the phone with the Tech rep from Abit he seems to think its the
drive or the board. I switched out the drive so it's probably the board. :mad:
I got the board from google gear and I hear there Customer Service sucks.

If anyone has any other ideas please speak freely.
Thankzz
 
Reset bios to defaults, disconnect HD's and cdrom(s) and try to boot using Windows boot disc or DOS disk - If that doesn't work I guess you killed the MoBo seeing as you changed the drives and the cables.
 
He said that he tried other cables. Also, he didn't kill the mobo, at most the floppy controller died or is defective. Apparently several others are having similar problems with the Abit TH7-II. Glimmer, do you actually use the floppy drive still? I almost never do anymore. I use the CD-ROM for loading all my software including the OS. If you're running Windows, go into the device manager and delete the floppy drivers. Next, reboot and it should automatically install the drivers again. It's possible the drivers are corrupt or messed up.
 
i fdisk/mbr/format/windows froms cd...set mybios so it only detects cd rom...and let win do the rest...speaking of bios if this has been a commone thing then maybe there is a glitch in the bios...try an update ???
 
Thanks for all your help guys. I threw in the towel and sent that bitchy mobo back to where it came from.:cool:

Does anyone have any recommendations for a good HSF for P4 478
 
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