floppy disk problem

Hi All
After installing windows XP I am having a problem with my floppy (A:\) drive.
If I insert a disk and try to read from it my system totally freezes.
Also what ever was on the disk becomes corrupted and unreadable.
I checked my bios and device driver. The device driver says that the device is working fine.
I even tried installing another floppy drive and the same thing happens!!!
I am at a loss with this.
I want to add a second HD to my system and I'll need a working floppy to boot from.
Any suggestions?
I was running w98 before XP and it was working fine

Thanks
Grimms

 

winxp vrs dos

Your old floppies were formated in dos. Shove a blank in drive A then rite click & select full format. Now drop some items to drive A.
Also when you add that second hard drive, winxp will partition format it for you at first boot So slick that drive A will be history sometime soon! All your good stuff is on winxp cd anyway

 

Thanks for the response.
Tried your fix. It didn't work.
System totally froze again.
I formatted a blank disk. Then I copied a .txt file to A:\.
The drive light came on and stayed on. My system totally froze.
Any more ideas?

Thanks,
Grimms

 

That is the 2nd issue recently with XP and a floppy drive not getting along. Have to look around some.

But how will you need a floppy disk as part of the install of a 2nd Hd?

 

i thought i needed a boot floppy.

 

forgive me. I just realized that i don't need a boot floppy if installing a second drive.
But lets not get distracted from the original problem.

Thanks again for your input!

grimms

 

drive a in winxp

Your quote "Thanks for the response.
Tried your fix. It didn't work.
System totally froze again.
I formatted a blank disk. Then I copied a .txt file to A:\.
The drive light came on and stayed on. My system totally froze. "
Any more ideas?

Thanks,
Grimms

If you can format a disk in drive A but can not copy or "see" anything then something is messed up for sure! Is there a yellow splat (!) in deviceman under Floppy disk controllers or Floppy disk drives?

 

Out of curiosity. What type and size floppy drive?

I just tried putting a a dos formatted 3.5 ", 720K disk in the computer, It copied back and forth fine. Interesting though. XP under properties reported size as 720k, but only gave me the option of formatting it as a 1.44mb disk. That could be my drive though.

Later tonight I'll be on a 'puter that has 5.25" drives running under XP + 3.5" drives (720 n 1.44mb). I'll check it out.
Also under - control panel > device manager > disk drives. Right click. Select properties of floppy drive.
Does windows report that it's working properly?
Is it using the XP driver?

K

 

Thanks for the input

not sure what type (brand) it is but it's a standard 1.44 floppy.
The device is working properly according to the device manager.
I also checked the driver. It is current ((File Version 5.1.2600.0(XP client 010817-1148)).

Thanks
grimms

 

Only 1 other question.
Is there anything else on the same cable (like a CD drive)?
If there is try uninstalling (software) and physically disconnecting the other device.

Also watch the green light on the floppy drive. Does it stay on when you access the disk? It should go off after a few seconds.

ps:
A hint when hooking up devices. The red wire on the ribbon cable (pin 1) ALWAYS goes towards the power plug side. That's in case the cable isn't keyed n can't read the pinout numbers. If you ever hook up a floppy reversed 99% of the time it's instantly blown.

Did I ever do that?


K

 

drive A

I can not imagine a cdrom or any ise device hooked into a 34 pin floppy drive ribbon!

Also if You have formated the diskette once then the drive is attached to the controler ribbon correctly also. Leaves floppy controler or it's driver

 

Thanks for the input

I tried reseating the cable and reformatting a disk.
It froze while formatting the disk this time

I'm all ears for this one...


awating your reply

grimms

 

any problems while loading bios?
is the power supply firmly plugged in?
now the comment about red alway goes to the power supply is true in everything but floppes. Older floppy drives have ribbons that actually aren't on the power side (I just played with one today) try both sides

how bout uninstalling the current driver, and re-installing...
sounds software though.....

 

drive a

in devicemanager, click the Plus next to "Floppy disk Controllers" & "Floppy disk drives" & "IDE/ATA ATAPI Contorllers" then post back what is there

 

wow, that's interesting...i've done that a lot, and never actually blown it, is that for older models or newer ones, cuz it seems the newer ones would have some sort of fuse protection of some sort so you don't blow it...

 

drive A

I have never blown a floppy drive by revesing the ribbon either. The darn thing just sets there with the green lite on tho.....

 

Thanks for the input.

ningaming: no problems loading the bios and the power cable is in correctly. I haven't tried uninstalling the driver yet though...

Rancher: under 'Floppy disk controllers' there is only 'Standard floppy disk drive'

under 'Floppy disk drives' there is only 'Floppy disk drive'

under 'IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers' there is 'Intel(r) 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller' then 'Primary IDE Channel'. then 'Secondary IDE channel'.

awaiting your response...

grimms

 

that's been my experience

did you check out windows XP update site for drivers or updates? Though i dont see anything in there for you

if there aren't any other suggestions, if you have another box, by all means try taking that one out, and putting this one in, if it works, its software, if it doesn't, its hardware (most likely anyway)

if you don't have access to another cpu, I'm out of suggestions sorry