Boots to HD but not to Floppy???

[Razl]

I recently built a new system: Epox 8KHA+, AMD 1700+, Enhance 300w PSU, Crucial PC2100 256MB x2 RAM, LeadTech G3 Ti200, SB Live 5.1, IBM 40G HD and Intel Pro 100+ NIC.

I've loaded Win 2000, and things ran great for about 2 weeks. I use Norton 2002 regularly to make quick images of my partitions. To do this, of course, I boot up with a floppy. Now, all of a sudden, my computer won't boot to a floppy. I get I/O errors, not a bootable disk prompt, and sometimes a flashing cursor with no activity. I've tried making a bootable MSDOS disk from Win98, used PC-DOS from Norton Ghost. My computer still boots to the HD, just not to a floppy. Any thoughts? Bad mobo?


Keep in mind that the disks are bootable in my other two computers running Win2000. I also swapped out a working floppy and reset the CMOS via the mobo jumpers. Thansk!!!

 

[corkyg]

Keep in mind that the disks are bootable in my other two computers running Win2000. I also swapped out a working floppy and reset the CMOS via the mobo jumpers. Thanks!!!

OK . . . that type of reset normally deletes all BIOS settings and leaves the default. Have you entered the BIOS on boot to make sure that the boot to floppy is first in front of CD or HDD?

If that is all OK, replace the floppy with a known good one. They only run about $15, and probably fail more frequently than any other piece of hardware in your system.

Can you boot to a CD?

 

[Razl]

Have you entered the BIOS on boot to make sure that the boot to floppy is first in front of CD or HDD?

Yes, the settings in the BIOS are correct. It is set to boot to floppy first. In fact the floppy light does come on and you can hear it reading the disk. However, that's when I get the can't boot error.

Can you boot to a CD?
Yes and no. If I attempt to boot from a CD, I get the boot error. If I put my Win2000 disc in, it does boot to the Windows setup/repair screen.


If that is all OK, replace the floppy with a known good one. I picked up a new floppy drive, but same error. One more thing, sometimes after a failed boot attempt with the floppy, it becomes unusable and prompts me to reformat it.

As a last despiration attempt, I reformatted my HD, booted to the W2K disc, reloaded W2K. But after all that, I still can't boot from a floppy!!@$#@!