5.25 Floppy A:

Hi,

I installed Windows 98 SE on my computer. For another partition, i have Windows XP installed. When i installed both OS, i installed with two hard disks, a master and a slave. Everything was fine. Now i removed the slave, leaving only the master hard disk. When i boot to WinXP, there came out another floppy disk drive, 3.5 floppy B:, but 3.5 floppy A: remained there. When i put in a floppy and clicked on A:, it managed to open, but when I opened B:, they said there was no floppy disk inserted. When i boot into Windows 98SE, more horrible things came out. There is only 1 floppy drive, 5.25 (or 5 1/4) floppy A:. When i clicked on it, the whole computer tends to lag and then they said no disc found. There is absolutely no drive letter for me to read the floppy disk. Anyone can help?

Thank you.

 

A few possibile causes.

1-Were the jumpers changed on the Primary HD when the salve was removed ?
2- Were the BIOS settings changed when the Slave was removed.

3- The Slave had stuff on it the was needed by the OSs.

On some systems the cable position that HDs are plugged into makes a differenece.

BillyBob

 

I am moving this to Hardware.
Try booting the computer with a floppy. If that succeeds, you know the BIOS is reading the A: drive correctly. If you use the following commands, press Enter at the end of each line, dos will try to access the appropiate drive.
b: << should present an error, if I understand there is not a B: drive
c: << should present a C:\> prompt

 

My bios do detect my floppy drive. Also, the WinXP OS as i mentioned also detects the floppy, but Win98 just do not. I try reinstalling but the same error happens. Also, the bios is set to enabling 3.5 floppy A: and B: drive is disabled. Furthermore, my bios only support the detection of a 3.5 floppy and not a 5 1/4 floppy. The jumper is also set correctly as the hard drive is detected as Primary Master during booting. I think it is something to do with Windows 98, maybe an .ini file.

Anyway, thank you for your explaination

 

Since it has happened when you have been changing parts inside the case, the cable(s) may have worked loose. I would pull out and reseat the cable connections to the floppy drive. Pull out and reseat all the (drive) cable connections to the motherboard. Go to Device Manager in both Win 98 and XP and remove any floppy drives. Reboot and let Windows redetect the drive.

Check that a boot/startup floppy will work like markp62 suggests.


Matt

 

The Floppy Drive cable DOES make a difference.

I believe after the twist is A:

Before the twist is B:

And I also suggest testing the boot floppy ( from a power off state )

BillyBob

 

yes. the cable is put properly. in fact, my cable is old and only support 1 floppy drive. It comes WITH a twist, and it connects to my FDD after the twist, so i believe it is okay. Also, i have tried unplugging many times, even the power cable. However, the same error occured.

 

fixed, multiple cd-roms

I managed to fix the problem. I forgot to mention that when i removed the old hard disk, i actually put in a cd-rw drive (Secondary Slave). I already have a cd-rom (secondary Master). I unplugged the secondary slave (cd-rw) and the thing is solved. I get back 3 1/2 floppy A:. It worked just fine.

However, now i question if Win98 SE do support multiple CD-ROMS or it only support 1.

Thank you to all of you for your help.

 

However, now i question if Win98 SE do support multiple CD-ROMS or it only support 1.

98 SE will support 2 HDs and 2 CDROMS My HDs are on one controler and the CDROMS are on the other.

One CDROM is a CDRW ( Master ) and the other is a regular CDROM ( slave )

BillyBob