Diskette Drive 0 seek failure

Hello all,

I have several issues going on with my machine. Any help would be appreciated. I am posting this on my work laptop.

1) I was streaming TV on nbc.com today, it was choppy, so I rebooted. The pc took forever to shut down. I noticed a message "unable to close ctfmon.exe" while I was shutting it down. Googling that indicates it may be spyware.

When I tried to start it back up, the computer won't reboot at all. It just sits on the black screen. I can hit cntrl-alt-delete and then hit F2 and get into BIOS. I tried reading other treads to see what I should do from there. I tried Loading the Defaults under System Info. When I restart, I get:

2) "diskette Drive 0 seek failure ". At this point I decided to come to you all for help. What should I do? I'm thinking I need to get it started up somehow and scan for spyware, but not sure how.

3) Possibly a seperate issue, but worth noting. IE7 decidedly quit working on this machine a few months ago. Firefox works great, so I never bothered to fix it. I'm now wondering if something got me all this time, and I didn't know it.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Noel

 

Hi Noelbase,
is the hard drive recognised in bios? are we talking desktop or laptop, have you checked the leads to your drive/s?
That's a start, hope it helps
Jac

 

Desktop.

How do I tell if BIOS recognizes my drives? Pretty much all I know is to go into there by hitting F2 when the machine boots, but I don't know where to go from there.

Do you think I should take the cover off and check my connections?

Thanks for the reply.
Noel

 

Do you have a 3 ½ drive?
If not when in Bios look for floppy drives and disable it if enabled.
If yes – it might be bad – find and change the boot order to start from hard drive.

 

I have an external floppy drive that I rarely use (like 1 time), and it is not currently connected (and it wasn't when the problem occurred).

I got this from another thread via Google:

I hit F2 to get into BIOS. Then I went to "Load Defaults ", then I hit "yes ". Then I hit F10 to exit. When I startup again, I get the "Diskette drive 0 seek failure ".

Where should I go in BIOS? What should I do?

Your help is really appreciated!

 

Think you solved the problem.
1st - plug in the floppy and turn the computer on - it should now work.
2nd - Don't know your Bios screens but somewhere in there is a boot (startup) sequence. Change it to boot from the C (hard drive) save and exit.

 

Hmm, ok I plugged it in. I honestly can't say if it's been plugged in for a long time or not, but it is possible that the external floppy was plugged in for a long time, just got unplugged, and that was the problem.

So, I plugged it back in. Still getting the same error. I went into BIOS. Went to Boot Device Configuration. Changed the First Boot Device to Hard Disk. Restarted the computer, but unfortunately same error message.

I feel like we may be on the right track, and I'm just not changing the correct option?

 

you've done everything right so far
Only other thing I can think of is in the Bios. Find where it lists the drives. Disable the floppy drive.
BTW – what’s the light on the floppy drive doing?

 

Hey Noel,
Giive me a lil' info on your system, I hope I can workout you bios from there

Bios can be complex or easy, you just have to use what's upstairs, if you think you might stuff up take the easy option, I am totally self taught, with the occassional help from friends (thank god I found BBS) but I can't remember how many comp's I have toyed with, Including my 5 or 6? laptops over the years?!

In Bios your 1st screen will give you options, the first should be highlighted; press enter, somewhere on the page it will tell you what drives are connected?! ((3.5 Floppy, CD/DVD, HDD 0, HDD1 etc)) PS you can switch off or select your floppy type from here
What type of drives are you running?! (Again system info helps a great deal) Sata Or Pata (Pata is also known as IDE)
Doesn't matter what the floppy light is doing especially if you are not using it, that is! if it is external?
Regards Jac

 

Right Church - Wrong Pew. You guys pretty much nailed it and noelbase needs to disable the floppy drive in his BIOS. The problem is that by selecting default in his BIOS setup options, he enabled a non-existant internal floppy as the first boot device - (which you've both referenced). An external floppy isn't going to show up in the BIOS as such (diskette 0).

noelbase - look for boot device order ( in BIOS) and move both the CDROM and HDD ahead of the floppy if you can't figure out how to totally remove it (floppy)from the boot order. Normally + or - keys or pageup, pagedown keys will permit you to move these devices up or down in the boot order and settings must be saved upon exiting the BIOS (usually F10).



edit: re-reading posts, I guess I just sound like an echo - my apologies for you've both said the same thing and three makes for a crowd. At least noelbase has a concensus.

 

Thanks guys- we have progress, as I can now get into Windows. However, I do still receive the error when booting up the machine. Not a huge deal, but I'd like to make it go away.

SATA drives is the answer to one question.

Rockster- I went into Boot Device Configuration and changed "First Boot Device" and "Second Boot Device" to both be "Hard Disk" previously, the first one of them was marked as "removable ". I would have expected this to solve the issue.

Basically, I now get the "Diskette Drive 0 seek failure" error message and hit F1 to continue. Previously when I hit F1 to continue, it just sat on a blank screen. Now I get into windows and the machine works fine. Any thoughts as to how to make it go away?

 

Hi Noel,
In general Bios is similar in most machines, but be aware while you go!

Go into your bios settings press enter at your 1st screen,
press down key until you reach the 3 1/2 drives (Read the side screen for help)
Now disable (set to "None ") any settings if you are not running an internal floppy drive, any usb floppy should be recognised once windows starts.

Hope this helps
Jac