Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Floppy Drive issue I've never seen before

Mar 1, 2004 2:15AM PST

I'm working on a Gateway P5-200 System that won't boot up. It's supposedly got W95 installed on a 2GB drive, but I don't know which version.

When I put in a floppy bootdisk for either version 95A or 95B, I was getting a 'not a valid system disk' error and assumed for a while that it was referring to the boot disk since when I checked in the bios, it was set to boot to the floppy drive first.

However, after creating new bootdisks at my XP computer (using downloaded bootdisks from www.bootdisk.de ), I was getting the same error message. I took the bootdisks back to my XP computer and tried to read the floppy disks, and was immediately told that they had to be formatted again, and when I said OK...XP would then tell me that formatting couldn't be done to the disks.

Threw out six after: swapping floppy drives with a known good one, changing the cable, disconnecting the harddrive, and disabling the cdrom boot option, after it finally dawned on me that the NEW error I was getting was 'put bootable media into the appropriate drive'.

I had been suspecting the Monkey virus since it will affect floppy drives but even if it is, I should be able to get to an A:> prompt without a harddrive, and it's going nowhere....although the floppy drive IS recognized by the bios as it's booting up.

And SOMETHING is trashing every floppy disk I use no matter whether it's the original floppy drive or one I swap to.

Has anybody got any clues? I removed the motherboard battery to reset the CMOS and even reset the bios manually back to defaults and still nothing. Would a bad floppy controller on the motherboard do this? I've never had one go bad before so if what I've described are the symptoms, I sure wouldn't have known or suspected it until now. Also...if it IS the floppy controller gone south, can I use an old ISA IDE card with a floppy controller on it to get around this? The motherboard has two ISA slots available in addition to the PCI and AGP slots so that might be an option for me.

TONI

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
The drive is old and could simply be out of alignment so...
Mar 1, 2004 3:29AM PST

it can't read tracks from another Floppy drive.Alignment is also a common cause of the dreaded unable to format or track 1 bad errors.

Try using the SAME floppy drive that you use for creating the boot diskettes (just move it into the Gateway).

I am sure you have already double checked the little things like data cable on properly and floppy attached to end connector with twist in cabling.

Also make sure that there isn't an option in the BIOS to "swap floppy drives".

- Collapse -
Re:The drive is old and could simply be out of alignment so...
Mar 1, 2004 3:47AM PST

I had already swapped out floppy drives in the Gateway...I have a number of new floppy drives here and used one of them. And I have the same problem with that drive installed, Ed. It is seen by the bios, but won't read any disks...and whatever it does to the disks inserted, my XP floppy drive can't read the files on them nor can it format the disk. Even though the floppy was created on my XP system in the first place (I can read the files fine just BEFORE taking it to the Gateway system). Once I've inserted the floppy into the Gateway system, even into a new floppy drive, it trashes the floppy disk immediately.

TONI

- Collapse -
Re:Re:The drive is old and could simply be out of alignment so...
Mar 1, 2004 4:13AM PST

Are you write protecting the disks before attempting to boot from them?

If its not the floppy, and not the cable then it could be the controller.

What about a CDROM boot?

- Collapse -
Re:Re:The drive is old and could simply be out of alignment so...
Mar 1, 2004 5:35AM PST

I am going to take a wag.

What your seeing is physical damage to the floppies when they are put in a floppy unit on the gateway.

Why?? because the floppy unit/s are not spinning the floppy before the heads are sent across the surface.

Result?? if you skid the heads across a stationary floppy you get to buy a lot of floppys.

Maybe remove the cover from the floppy unit so you can see the heads and the floppy disk plug in the cables and hold the unit in your hand and watch what happens when you power up the unit.

The floppy disk should spin before the heads activate.

- Collapse -
Re:Re:Re:The drive is old and could simply be out of alignment so...
Mar 1, 2004 5:39AM PST

Have you checked to see if the floppy is set to 3 1/2 inch/1.44 mb?

- Collapse -
Bios floppy drive options
Mar 1, 2004 6:59AM PST

lists a number of options for various types of floppy drives; however, the line available for 1.44MB is also shared on the same line as 720KB....I don't have an option to only choose 1.44 with that drop down menu.

I can understand bob's suggestion about the disks getting damaged; however, I have already swapped drives physically with a brand new drive and it does the same thing.

I'm guessing that the controller is crapped out and the data just isn't getting read properly on a disk that I did NOT write protect ahead of time and that the data on the disk is being trashed every time.

So...that said, I just need to find out if I can use an old ISA EIDE card that has a floppy controller on it to hook the floppy drive to (disable in the bios the floppy drive completely, I would assume as well), and have something like that work???

TONI

- Collapse -
Re:Bios floppy drive options
Mar 1, 2004 7:46AM PST

I have already swapped drives physically with a brand new drive and it does the same thing.
-------------------
It may not be a floppy unit issue but a connector/cable/power thing.


I'm guessing that the controller is crapped out and the data just isn't getting read properly on a disk that I did NOT write protect ahead of time and that the data on the disk is being trashed every time.
------------------
If it's just the data being trashed. Why would that prevent you from bringing the floppy back to the XP sys and reformatting the floppy?


I'm confused,(normal mode) is it possible to render a floopy unformattable by altering/trashing the data?

Perhaps the wizard R.P. can explain.

- Collapse -
I am just as confused LOL (NT)
Mar 1, 2004 8:45AM PST

.

- Collapse -
Re:Floppy Drive issue I've never seen before...Update
Mar 2, 2004 1:23AM PST

I'm normally pretty good at troubleshooting hardware issues, but this one is kicking my butt.

I put in an ISA floppy disk controller (new in box), and have tried disabling the floppy controller in the bios and re-enabling it, but I get the same error message on the bootup screen no matter what.

"FDC-344
FDC error - conflict with system resources"....and I don't know how to resolve it.

The card is:
Modular Circuit Technology MCT-FDC-HD4

There are jumpers for 360K, 720K, 1.2MB, and 1.44MB

However, the diagram in the user manual is (although very plain and simple to look at) not what the jumpers are defaulted to on the card. I've tried various jumper configurations for the 1.44MB

In any event...after write protecting a newly created MSDOS bootdisk, I finally got to an A:> (asking for the command interpreter, but at least it's there). I still get the FDC error on screen, but it's reading a disk finally as long as it's write protected.

I'm going to hook up the harddrive next and see if I can get a DIR reading on it next. If anybody has any idea why I can get a write protected bootdisk to be seen vs one that isn't write protected, I'm more than interested.

TONI

- Collapse -
Another Update
Mar 2, 2004 2:27AM PST

I've discovered through trial and error that the controller on the motherboard is shot...as is the original floppy drive.

I've managed to get the add-in controller card working with a new floppy drive, and am formatting the harddrive now.

Guess I'll never know why I still have to use write protected floppy disks, but at least it's good information to pass on to the kid this system is going to as write protected disks are far safer than ones that aren't.

TONI

- Collapse -
Re:Floppy Drive issue I've never seen before
Mar 2, 2004 5:09AM PST

I've had a problem like that before. It could just be that the floppies you have are no good, which happens from time to time even with ones bought from a local store (like WalMart, etc.). Another solution is that the floppy drives might either be bad themselves, or they may need to be cleaned. I'd try the old ISA floppy connector to see if it would work before going and shelling money out on a new one. Try getting new floppies again first.