Cannot access Drive A Floppy

Drive A shows up in My Computer but when I try to access or use the drive nothing happens. I get a window that either states that there is no disk in Drive A or that This disk has not been formated. I have checked inside the tower and everything is secure and plugged into the drive. Any suggestions?

Oh, I run XP Home Edition.

 

Thinking back, I have not known a floppy drive to actually break down, although one thing that happened was putting an old disk in, the disk surface was breaking up and it was not flat, so it smeared the heads with media. I got a floppy disk drive cleaner and it was fine after a few cleans. It has come in handy a few times since as well.

Have you tried a different batch of disks? It sounds similar to when the surface starts to break down (floppy disks only have a limited lifespan) or if it/they have come in contact with a magnetic field or high temperatures. Keep important data on relatively new disks, I only use old disks for file transfers.

Cable connections. Actually pull and reseat the connections as wel as at the motherboard connector for the data cable. It may be worth disconnecting the cables, boot up to Windows, then shutdown and replace the cables. That may reset drivers, etc. There are a few types of floppy drive drivers, it may be possible that Windows has the wrong type installed. Try uninstalling the drive in Device Manager, it will be automatically reinstalled when reboot.

They are very cheap to buy now, but I would just check other possibilities first or you may still be in the same boat. If you have the access and the time try connecting a drive from another computer.

Matt

 

Mystery solved!

I was going to try another A drive and in the process of changing them out I discovered that the original drive had the wrong wire plugged into it. Attaching the right power lead done the trick. So it was much ado about nothing. I thank everyone for your advice. It always seems that the simple things should be checked first. I just assumed that the wires attached to the A drive were the correct ones. Well, you know what happens when you ass-u-me things.

 

Thanks for letting us know. Good result