Won't Boot From Floppy? Why?

[Playmaker]

I swapped out my Epox 8K7A for an ECS KS75A and for some reason it won't let me boot from the floppy. It's plugged in, powered up, is recognized in the BIOS, and works when I get into windows, but I can't boot from the floppy. Unfortunately, I need to boot into DOS to flash the BIOS. Anyone know why this might be?

Would it be possible to make a DOS bootable CD and then insert the floppy with the new BIOS in? If so, where could I find an ISO of a DOS bootable CD? Thanks.

 

[MichaelD]

Is the floppy selected first in the boot order in the bios?

Is there a specific "enable boot from floppy" option?

Just taking pot shots here...not familiar w/that board.

Does that board use an Award bios? You could always dl the Awardflash proggy and boot from that...assuming you get the floppy to work.

Failing my first two shots, above, do you have another floppy you could swap in? You never know...

 

[EeyoreX]

Another shot in the dark maybe... Many BIOS setups have an option for "Swap floppy drive". IIRC this was mainly so you could switch which floppy was bootable when you had 2 floppies installed (presumably a 3.5" and a 5.25"). You might want to look into that too... Good luck!

\Dan

 

[Playmaker]

Yes, floppy is first and there is no "enable boot from floppy option." Unfortunately it's an AMI BIOS =( The newer verions of the board use Award BIOSes heh. I play on swapping it out for a different one as soon as I can, but I'm not so sure that's it. I get a message that goes something like this during boot up... "Booting From Floppy Drive...OK" Normally it says Not Found and continues the boot up process, but if there is a disk in it says OK. However, instead of booting from the floppy it will say on the next line "Removed Any Disks or Media" or something similar and then below that it will say "Press Any Key to Restart" and by pressing any key the boot up continues into WinXP. Any other suggestions?

 

[Playmaker]

I guess it was my boot disk of all things. I created the DOS bootdisk in WinXP and it wasn't working. I tried an old Win98 boot disk and it worked fine. BIOS flashed to latest version and all. My only concern left with this new build is whether or not my Crucial PC2100 will run at CAS2 or not. It didn't work on my old Epox 8K7A on one BIOS, but when I flashed it to a newer one it did. Hopefully it will run on this comp. I think I'll run memtest for the next 8 hours while I sleep to be sure. Hopefully it boots off the disk heh. Thanks for all your suggestions.

 

[MichaelD]

:gift: Cha-ching!

good deal. Have fun!