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I can't get any floppy drives to work

M

Memphis101

Member
Everything looks right in the bios, and I replaced the cable and the drive. When I insert different floppys into the drive and double click the drive in My Computer it tells me to insert disk.

The only reason I need the floppy drive is for a SATA driver when I reinstall windows. Without it it won't read my SATA harddrive. I don't see a way to do this without that driver on the floppy, but if anyone knows how to fix this problem or of another way to let it read my HDD without the floppy in order for me to reinstall windows, could you help me out?

Any replies would be appreciated.
 
When you say everything looks alright in the BIOS you mean you made sure that the Floppy controller is enabled? Some BIOS have a option for setting the type of floppy disk as well as whether it is enabled or not (which may not be on the same page).
 
Have you made sure the cable was going in the right way? Many floppies will let it go either way but it will only work one way.
 
Yep, everything was enabled in bios and I restored the settings to default last time around (which is what it has been for the past 4-5 years)

I made sure both cables were going in the right way (the twist at the floppy drive part) and both new cords are labeled anyway.

Thanks for replies.

edit: And i just found a 3rd floppy drive in a closet to try out that did not work either. 2 new cords and 3 floppy drives.
 
Does your motherboard have an option to boot from USB device? If so you can use a USB thumb drive to load the drivers.
 
Ah! great idea! USB-FDD would be floppy disk drive right?

Before I go out and buy a usb floppy drive (what are those, about 20-25 dollars?)
i'm thinking about having to install usb drivers before I can use my mouse each time I've reinstalled windows in the past. I can't quite remember if I had to or not and I'm worried I may just be wasting more money if I can't get it to read my usb floppy. I have a keyboard that isn't usb and I'm pretty sure I have this keyboard now over my usb one because it wouldn't read my usb one when reinstalling the OS.

And just to add, my mobo is a Abit AV8. Do you think it may have gone bad?
 
When you power on the machine is the light on the drive on constantly or does it cycle on/off during the boot process?
 
On my first Floppy drive, when I power on the machine, the light stays on for about 3 secs and goes off just before windows begins to boot up. When I try to access the disk in the drive through "My Computer" the light stays on for a while then goes off after i cancel the "insert disk" message. No light at all comes on my other two floppy drives and none of them make any sounds when I try to access them.

But the light never flickers or anything it just stays solid for a bit
 
Check in Device Manager and see if the floppy has a Yellow ! next to it .. If so the drivers are bad or missing.
You could also delete the drivers and let Windows redetect the floppy on next boot up. Also recheck that all
the motherboard chipset drivers are installed as the floppy controller is most likely part of the mobo chipset.
 
No yellow !. I did as you suggested by deleting the drivers and letting windows redetect. I installed my mobos chipset again also.

What is strange to me is that no light comes on with my other two floppy drives, but when I use the latest cable I bought no light comes on my original floppy.

Man, this is bizarre.
 
Do you have a RAID controller on that PC that you were using before the current Install of Windows? I've seen a case where a RAID controller with the "wrong" disks attached made it impossible to boot to the floppy disk, too. I had to clear the content of the RAID controller before the floppy drive would work.
 
There are four other options for doing a hard drive controller driver install without a conventional floppy drive:

1) A USB FLOPPY drive will work. Do some reading to be sure you pick a "good" brand of USB floppy drive. Some won't work for this purpose.

2) You can integrate your SATA device drivers into your XP Install CD. You can search to find out how to do this.

3) If you are installing Vista, you can use a USB flash drive instead of a floppy drive. But tgat won't work in XP. XP requires a real floppy drive.

4) Set the PC BIOS to "IDE Emulation Mode" (it may have another name). The BIOS will preent the SATA drives to Windows as old-style IDE drives, and Windows will install without special SATA drivers.
 
Thank you very much for showing me my options. I'll do a little research on the first 2 today.

Thanks for all the replies. Very helpful forum, and though this isn't the same account, you guys helped me build my first computer 4-5 years ago and I went from knowing absolutely nothing about computers to thinking I know enough about computers just from this site alone, lol.
 
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