[kharley]

OK worry wart is back I went and bought a new floppy and a new ribbon came home installed it but still does the same thing as far as the F2 to be able to load windows but now it's doing the other thing it was doing before that I thought was fixed. When I reboot sometimes it tells me no operating system found and I have to shut it down a few minutes and hope it loads windows when I turn it back on. I would also like to know the order in which my boot options are supposed to be, after installing the new floppy it wasn't finding my windows so I took out the battery for about 15 minutes but it still did the same thing with the F2 key. This is very frustraiting I really depend on my computer I am disabled so it's all I have and I cant afford to buy another one which I would love to do especially sense I seen one today when I bought my floppy I would give my eye theeth for and it was only $500.00 dollars. Well anyway please do you have anymore ideas or suggestions as to what I can do to fix this problem, Thank you,

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I am an idiot when it comes to this stuff but somebody told me last night that it might be my battery causing these problems, is that a possibility, Thank you.

[kharley]

I am an idiot when it comes to this stuff but somebody told me last night that it might be my battery causing these problems, is that a possibility, Thank you.

[Troy]

Hi there kharley!

If you have followed SAMM's suggestion in Post #13 (setting the floppy drive to none or disabled), then try re-enabling it first. If not...

If you're talking about the CMOS battery, then I'm not too sure. They are very cheap to buy anyway (only a few dollars), so perhaps replace it with a new one and see if that helps.

Failing that, the only thing I can think of would be that the port on the motherboard is faulty, and the motherboard would need to be replaced. This would be a reasonably expensive and time-consuming job. You could possibly get around this by using a USB floppy disk drive - here's one for just $20.

[kharley]

I was just wondering if all of this is due to the floppy drive would that cause the problem I have sometimes when I try to restart my computer of getting the message of no operating system found, and sometimes it restarts on it's own and the same error message. I am more worried about that part than the floppy, I will totally remove the floppy if that's the cause of all these problems, Thank you.

[Samm]

Hi there kharley

Apologies for my absence - been with Internet for the last few days!

FPVDriF6 may have a point here - it is starting to look like there may be more going on than just a floppy drive or controller problem. I would like to take you back to the point just before you bought the replacement floppy drive - i.e the floppy drives ribbon cable disconnected from the motherboard & the floppy drive disabled in the bios. I want to know if all of the problems you described still persist in this state. Unless you already happen to know that they do, then please return your system to the state I just described & run it until each of the problems reoccur, or for a few days, whichever comes first.

[kharley]

I have about decided to just take the floppy out all together and do the external if needed but I need to know if doing this is going to cause other problems, If I take the floppy out totally will I need to set it to none in my BIOS.

[Troy]

Hi kharley!

Yes, this is a good idea. Disconnect the floppy drive from the data cable and the power source, and then set it to None in the BIOS so that your computer does not search for a floppy drive at all.

Let us know how this goes.

[kharley]

OK I want to make sure I do this right I dont need anymore problems I cant fix, because I like said in my other post living on disability I cant buy another one. I disconnect the cables first then restart and reset my BIOS, PLEASE tell me this is not going to hurt anything. I am sorry for being so scared I just dont have very good LUCK when it comes to this kind of stuff.

[Troy]

Yes this shouldn't hurt anything at all. I understand about being on a tight budget - I have a 4-week old son and just got hit with a $3500 tax bill - ouch!

Nevertheless, let's get you some decent instructions, just to be sure:

1) Make sure you Shut Down the computer so it's off, and disconnect the power cable from the back of the computer. I usually disconnect every cable and move the tower (carefully) to somewhere like the kitchen table, where there's lots of space, but this may be unnecessary as we're only disconnecting a couple of cables, not completely moving components around...

2) Using a screwdriver, remove the side panel from the case.

3) Before touching anything, make sure to touch a part of the metal chassis inside the case - this is to make sure any static is removed from your body.

4) Completely remove the floppy drive data cable from the back of the floppy drive and from the motherboard. You should be able to completely pull this cable out.

5) Disconnect the floppy power cable from the back of the floppy drive. It should still be connected to your power supply, so just tuck it away somewhere nicely in the case.

6) The actual floppy drive should now just be sitting in your case with nothing connected to it. This won't do any damage. You could completely remove it by unscrewing it and pulling it out, but for now this does not matter.

7) Put the side panel back on and connect the power cable (and any other cables you removed) back into the tower.

8) Boot your computer and enter the BIOS, set the floppy drive to None. Do not make any other changes. Press the F10 key and confirm that you want to save changes and exit.

9) Report back here and tell us what your computer now does.

Hope this is helpful! Any further questions, please feel free to ask!
Cheers

[kharley]

I checked the floppy connection but it will only hook up one way I dont see how it could be hooked up wrong. I have run some test to see if maybe it was a problem with my hard drive but all test came back fine. I ran chkdsk, I ran Active smart, I ran nortons hard drive is fine. I went in to the device manager it say's the floppy and the floppy controller is operating fine but nortons say's the floppy is not working. I was wondering what is a floppy controller and how do I replace it. I ran a test to check the Winsock what ever that is to check my ftp port but it came up with unknown error. The nortons said it could be the floppy controller or the mother board could this also cause the problems with the ftp port, Thank you.

[kharley]

Is setting the floppy drive to disabled the same as setting it to none I checked it the other day when I had to restart and it has disable but no none, Thank you.

[Troy]

Yes, I would assume Disabled is the same as None. I just wasn't sure of the exact terminology in your BIOS.

[Samm]

Re. your earlier query about the floppy controller....

The floppy controller is built into the motherboard so it cannot be replaced without replacing the entire board. As for device manager reporting that the floppy controller & floppy drive are working ok, all this means is that the floppy controller etc is enabled in the bios & that there are no resource conflicts. It doesn't actually mean that the controller or the drive are functioning correctly however.