XP will not load, displaying Floppy diskette seek failure...

After 88 month my XP did the same thing. Go to 'System' and remove the floppy. Then click F2 and change the boot sequence.
NO MORE PROBLEMS.
HP Graphics

Taking the authors info as is, I had to dredge through a few old trouble slips. In that point of the PCs evolution, floppies, having moved from huge 8 inch, to 5 1/4 inch to final 3 1/2 inch hard case diskettes. The most common problem turned out to be a failed, dead CMOS battery and it was unable to accept or hold any settings. Can be difficult if the machine doesn't have a diskette drive to try and load something bootable. Another fault was tacked to a failed IDE controller chip (it supported the floppies too) that was on the MOBO. Usually a failed CMOS battery is accompanied by random faults that are intermittent and even get stuck in a reboot loop.

The times I have seen this is when Drive C, where XP is supposed to run, has failed. Your BIOS goes through your Boot Order, couldn't find XP on Drive C, and stops on "Floppy diskette seek failure" because it is the next drive in line to look for XP and you didn't have a bootable floppy disk in the floppy drive. Try putting a boot disk in your floppy, wait for it to load, then see if you can find Drive C. I bet it does not show up, in which case I hope you have good backups of your data.

One thing you can try: If you have a good hard drive identical with your dead Drive C, take the control board off the good drive and put it on your dead drive. This may fix your Drive C. If not, you need a new hard drive.

Enter the bios at startup using the F2 key or what ever key that gets you into the bios setup. Find the section labeled 'boot sequence'. If the Floppy drive is above the Hard drive the system will look for the boot record from your floppy drive even if you don't have one. Since it can't find the boot record it will give you this error. Your boot sequence should start with your hard drive followed by one or more of your DVD drives followed by what ever you want. This way when your system boots it will look first for the boot record on your hard drive. If your hard drive fails it will look for your start up disk on your DVD drive.

Did you get it fixed? If so what was the fix?

Lots of good answers so far, but the problem was incompletely stated, so we are largely guessing. One important aspect wasn't mentioned at all so far.

Okay, case distinction:

Does your system have a Floppy drive or not? And is it working?

Does your BIOS say you have a Floppy drive? Have you changed that recently?

Do you actually still need/use floppies?

So, obviously, if you don't need the floppy drive, the suggestion will be to remove it and eliminate references to it in the BIOS - also change the boot sequence to eliminate the floppy drive. Even if ultimately you want to put it back in, it would help matters at this point if you could exclude it as a source of error.

The important aspect I didn't see mentioned at all so far is this: Could it be that your system is trying to boot from the floppy drive because your regular boot device - your hard drive? - is out of commission?

In the olden days we used to run boot sequences that would try the floppy first and if there wasn't a disk in there it would try the hard drive. Today we often have the hard drive first, then the CD/DVD drive, then any USB device that might be bootable, then the floppy and sometimes as a final option the network.

(Yes, I also have an old system that will hang if mass storage USB devices are connected at boot time, and I always thought that was a bug. But maybe I could have configured that away as was suggested here.)

But what I am getting at here is that "other boot devices" are nowadays often only accessed if the primary boot device, the hard drive, doesn't work.

So let's find out if that isn't where the real problem lies. And if so, here is your next case distinction:

Is the hard drive dead or can it be read but won't boot?

In the first case the answer is easy (I hope for you): Get a new drive and restore from your latest backup. You have a working backup, don't you?

In the second case it is a matter of repairing the Windows installation using an install CD/DVD. If you aren't very experienced with this, I suggest you get help with it. It would also be wise to back up all user data on the drive before you attempt the repair. For this it may be necessary (or at least convenient) to remove the drive from the computer and temporarily connect it to another one, possibly using a USB adapter.

I wanted to build a new computer and I wanted 64 Bit so I tried XP Pro 64 Bit on a new hard drive and the system asked for a floppy for copying files. I don't have a floppy disc anymore and I didn't want to mickey-mouse around by getting one with an extra PCI card to accommodate an IDE cable. I can't remember if I went into the bios or not but I looked on the web for answers and came to the conclusion that it wasn't going to work so I went with Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit and I'm very happy with that decision.

John47B

I'm not a pro by any means, but when I had this issue years back, the disk drive had to be replaced. It solved the problem. Of course I did not do it myself, I have a great tech guy who does all my stuff.

you use dvd-rom or cd-rom for window xp and for other windows. Get easily window. You don't use floppy diskette for windows its gives error.

I read this and tried an experiment in order to help.

I have various systems with single OS's and multiple so, I chose the simple route, the machine with only XP (Pro) on it. I disconnected the floppy and true-to-form, got the same message. SO, instead of going through the mucking around with bios updates (DANGEROUS! - Even the correct ones can fail and you end up with the world's most expensive door-stop), I simply went into the set-up side of the bios and deselected "Floppy seek" and hey presto - Straight into XP np at all.

I then shut down, reconnected said floppy and the floppy registered on boot and THEN returned the floppy seek, within the set-up back to where it was.

I hope this helps - Good luck.

This is very simple to fix. Go to Home Depot to the tools section and buy the Best Hammer on the market and strike the floppy Disk 5 times as hard as you can. If this does not work hit it 10 times. Then have a Beer and relax,

Regardless of the BIOS setting, on Windows startup, the floppy drive will be cycled during the startup test. And remembering that 10 year old BIOS where not particularly forgiving regarding floppy issues, I suggest the following:

As it's a floppy "seek" error, it may be either, the floppy has gone bad (if in the drive), the floppy drive has gone bad, or the motherboard floppy drive service.

First, unless you are booting from the floppy, remove the floppy and try it. If you need to boot from the floppy you have two choices. One, try someone else's boot floppy. Two, try your floppy on another computer that has a floppy drive. Good luck with finding either.

Second, if you don't need to boot from the floppy, make sure a floppy is not in the drive. Start the computer. If you get no error, you are done.

Third, if after Second, you do get the seek error, then physically disconnect the floppy drive inside the computer. Two choice here too.

Note: the next steps involve disconnecting and/or removing hardware. Make sure the computer is powered down for each of those step. Computer equipment is not kind to plugging and unplugging with the power on.

One) If the floppy drive is connected to the motherboard, disconnect the floppy drive at the motherboard, and restart the computer into the BIOS. Make sure that the floppy drive is not listed. Restart the computer. If you now get a seek error, then I suggest it's a motherboard issue.

Two) If the floppy is connected to a plugged in card, unplug the floppy drive first, restart the computer, check the BIOS for no floppy drive. If you get the seek error, unplug the card, restart the computer, again check the BIOS for no floppy drive. If you still get the seek error, then again it points to the motherboard. If there is no error, then it's either the floppy drive or the card. So you can try to replace the card and/or the floppy. Good luck with that too.

Hope any of this help. I feel for you, my 9 year old Dell laptop runs XP, and so far it has run VERY well. It's been a tough little machine, but any day now...

My first thought was like most everyone else's - to remove the floppy drive from the boot sequence and or shut it off and disconnect it. But he says:

"Get same message after trying: hitting F8 to boot to Safe mode, hitting F2 setup to change boot sequence to remove floppy drive from sequence."

I'm assuming that he's hitting F2 to get into the bios, and that all he gets is the same error, NOT the bios. F2 is not the normal (to me) key for entering bios, so I don't know if that's what he means or how he knows to do that if it is. DEL has always been the bios entry I've used.
Anyhow, if he can't get to the bios it makes every suggestion to do that moot.

Go into your CMOS setup by pressing DEL or F2 and disable floppy seek. The floppy see feature is used to discover the size floppy in the drive. The are probably and 740 kb floppies anymore. Now they are 1.4 meg so the seek is not even necessary. Just a thought.

If this is happening at the post, then there is nothing you can do about this by changing the OS. If this is at the point where it is trying to load the OS, you have two possibilities. Either the floppy is higher in the boot sequence than the hard drive or the hard drive may be bad, in some way. Do you get a chance to hit F8 to get the boot options such as safe mode? That is part of the OS. If not, then this is boot.

As others have suggested, I'd take a look at the BIOS settings by hitting F2 early in the boot. Check the boot order. Hopefully, the floppy is higher in priority than the hdd. If not, it could be a bad hard drive. If you can disable the floppy in the BIOS, do so. If not, you probably should disconnect the cables going to it in the hardware. By disconnecting the cables, that will remove the floppy from the XP device manager.

Can you boot to a utility partition? This would be a good test as well. (F. Usually, if you don't have a disk in the floppy disk drive but the hard disk is not working, you usually get Operating System not found errors. I would disconnect the floppy cables and test and go from there, especially if you can't get into the BIOS settings to disable it there.

Considering the age of the computer, it's the right time for the CMOS battery to have died or be near death. That will cause all kinds of boot problems.

In 10 years this Operating System has been upgraded, updated, re-configured & reconfigured, thus, each time its re-configured you get a new operating system compatible with new programs & computer features. This negates many old programs or render them obsolete & windows driver are forever lost, to make them work. Windows XP is 10 months from being shut down with support or obsolete, therefore it is not being updated to its fulliest, this is what cause Window XP Home not to work on diskete, there is no driver update on Service Pack 3.

I've given the solution which I have now experimented with in my lab twice. Floppies are NOT deemed to fail often as some people "suggest". Jon - Look for my tests of yesterday. DO NOT muck around with ANY updates to the bios and just follow my simple steps posted in my previous.

For those who do not know. The floppy drive remains, even today, the BEST way of returning a computer back to factory condition. My floppies have NEVER failed (NOT a Wife joke!).

The simple solution is ALWAYS the best!