Floppy disk fail (40) error message on boot

[Dudd]

This is an nForce 2 motherboard in a Shuttle SN41G2. What happened is that in that my computer randomly shutdown. I wasn't doing anything too crazy, just surfing the internet and playing some online poker. From inside the case, a really bright red light could be seen, and the computer would only turn back on once I unplugged the power cord and then plugged it back in. Now, every time I boot up, I get the floppy disk fail (40) error message. All I have installed in the machine is a Radeon 9800, a Lite-On DVD/CD-RW drive, and a hard drive, no floppy is or ever has been installed. After restarting the computer, I cannot boot until I hit F1 to continue, and once Windows XP loaded, half the folders in my start menu were highlighted as having just been installed. My FSB had also been set back to 100 mhz rather than the standard 166. Everything I've seen about this error code says that it's most likely that the floppy drive cable has come loose, which obviously isn't the case here. Besides these two anomolies, everything seems to be working fine, with the exception of having to hit F1 everytime I reboot. Anyone know what may have happened, and how to fix it?

 

[Anubis]

go into the bios and turn OFF "Boot Floppy Seek"

it sounds like your bios reset for some reason, bad CMOS battery?

 

[srygonic]

Turn off floppy in bios.

 

[w00t]

looks like bad cmos battery just get it replaced.

 

[GamerExpress]

Originally posted by: w00t
looks like bad cmos battery just get it replaced.

Well it could be, but I wouldn't bank on that. I would go into the Bios first and just disable the floppy drive as a boot device.

 

[Dudd]

The floppy did get reset as the first boot device in the BIOS, and disabling that took care of the error message. One other thing, when I first booted back up, the clock had also reset itself. This does sound like something that would happen with a bad battery, right?

 

[interchange]

Well the CMOS definitely got reset, but it's not necessarily a bad battery. Turn your computer off and wait some time for the capacitors to discharge and then back on. If your settings are still there then I'd say you're fine. Could have been some short or power spike or something.