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Lost Floppy Drive.

Soapy Sam

Penultimate Amazing
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Oct 23, 2002
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Win XP Home.
Put floppy disc in A: drive.
Dialog (Monolog) box appears -" Put a disc in the drive".
Drive does not read , or recognise disc. Power light on, but nobody home.

Uninstalled both drive and driver. Reinstalled. Same.

Uninstalled drive and driver, physically removed drive and replaced with another floppy drive. Reinstall driver. Same.

Both drives work in another machine.

Any suggestions? (Apart from "Use the other machine".)
 
Check inside the drive to make sure the metal slider from another floppy isn't stuck in it.

Edit: re-read your post and see you've replaced drive so that's, quite frankly, bollocks.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Any suggestions? (Apart from "Use the other machine".)
Click to expand...
Stop using floppies?

Seriously though, what are you using them for? I was surprised when Macs stopped shipping with floppies, as I still found them useful for just transferring a small file to a friend in a non-network environment. But surely everyone has net access and CD writers now?

That said, I used one to ghost my hard drive not long ago. But I'm sure I could have done without if I'd thought a little.

It's not meant to be a facetious question; I'm genuinely curious as to what needs a floppy drive these days. I've got a drive physically sitting in my machine, but it's only filling an otherwise vacant slot for which I don't have a handy blanking plate. It has neither floppy cable nor power. And that occasionally causes my antivirus to have a fit.

I guess asking whether the drive is on the XP HCL is pointless, as a floppy drive is a floppy drive. But was the other machine (in which the drives worked) an XP machine?

Cheers,
Rat.
 
Do you have the cable in upside down, you can do that with most old drives.

Will the drive show up OK in the device manager, ir does it have a yellow triangle next to it?

You can buy a little USB keychain drive for $40. Most motherboards will support them in BIOS so you can use it for all your Floppy stuff.
 
Re: Re: Lost Floppy Drive.

ratcomp1974 said:
It's not meant to be a facetious question; I'm genuinely curious as to what needs a floppy drive these days.
Click to expand...
Well, I bought an ethernet card yesterday and the driver came on a floppy.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by ratcomp1974
It's not meant to be a facetious question; I'm genuinely curious as to what needs a floppy drive these days.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click to expand...

These days, the typical home computer user has a machine full of the latest hardware technology, from 100 gig hard drives, DVD and CD burners, flat screen monitors, video cards with enough memory to cure color-blindness, flash-drives, zip drives and more. All so they can easily play their favorite game or download porno.

For these typical home users, a floppy drive is of little consequence, or unknown completely to them. This is an ok thing- why have a floppy drive if you don't need it? OK!

However, what the majority of people fail to comprehend in todays high tech world, is a fact known only to: a) computer consultants, programmers and the like; b) non-home user, non game playing people who use a computer as part of their work day. What fact?

About 70% of all retail businesses in the United States use a point-of-sale system, not just a simple stand alone cash register. Be it Safeway, Wal-Mart, TGIFridays, Movie theatres, and the small mom and pop store down on the corner, they all have one thing in common. The POS system running their invoicing, inventory control, purchasing and receiving, customer management, etc., etc.. is operating on at least one, but usually more than one computer. Regardless of the software, 99% of these computers better have a FLOPPY DRIVE on them, or their retail world would come to an abrupt halt. Other than a few, if any at all, new systems, all of these POS systems require, at one point or another; be it end of day or week or month; or transferring files, or backing up data; A FLOPPY DRIVE.

Flash drive no good. Zip drive no good. CD burner no good.
Floppy drive GOOD.
 
Iconoclast said:

I don't think anyone said that.
Click to expand...


Actually...

Originally posted by Soapy Sam Uninstalled drive and driver, physically removed drive and replaced with another floppy drive. Reinstall driver. Same.
Click to expand...

In fact, wouldn't the HAL ensure that a driver was needed to run a floppy disk in Windows? Or is my memory failing me?

Funnily enough, there seems to be something of an epidemic of failing floppies these days. This is the third one I've encountered in a couple of weeks.

Coincidence - or an attempt by Microsoft to make PCs even more like Macs, by removing the floppies from them all? Or A new, unreported virus? A gummint conspiracy? Sunspots? Random fluxing of the Earth's magnetic field? Incompetent coding (All three machines were running XP) :eek:
 
What needs a floppy? BIOS updates sometimes require you to boot from a floppy, ditto some tools like partition magic. Recovery floppy, whatever windows calls the damned things?
Plus they cost peanuts anyway
 
richardm said:
Coincidence - or an attempt by Microsoft to make PCs even more like Macs, by removing the floppies from them all? Or A new, unreported virus? A gummint conspiracy? Sunspots? Random fluxing of the Earth's magnetic field? Incompetent coding (All three machines were running XP) :eek:
Click to expand...
There is an issue with SP1 and some models of floppy drive. Google the groups for more info.
 
Wudang said:
What needs a floppy? BIOS updates sometimes require you to boot from a floppy, ditto some tools like partition magic. Recovery floppy, whatever windows calls the damned things?
Plus they cost peanuts anyway
Click to expand...

Well... I think you've answered your own question here :D
 
mummymonkey said:
There is an issue with SP1 and some models of floppy drive. Google the groups for more info.
Click to expand...

Ah.. the 'incompetent coding' option. I suspected as much. Still, I suppose it's not fair to expect Microsoft to be able to keep up to date with all the latest cutting-edge technologies, like High Density disk drives.

Or, perhaps like Wudang they were so dismissive of them that they didn't test properly?
 
Soapy Sam said:
Win XP Home.
Put floppy disc in A: drive.
Dialog (Monolog) box appears -" Put a disc in the drive".
Drive does not read , or recognise disc. Power light on, but nobody home.
Click to expand...

Sam -
If the power light on the drive is always on, that often indicates that the cable is connected to the drive the wrong way round.

If the light is off and the drive can't be seen, the cable may be connected to the motherboard the wrong way round - inspired by this thread, I have just resolved one of my three floppy problems with this idea.

You should connect the cable to the drive using the connector after the twist if it's meant to be drive a:.

If the drive is okay it could be the controller. And you might want to check that it is set up as the right drive type is selected in the BIOS.

That's all there is really. Can't think of anything else, anyway. Good luck!
 
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