[wannabe1]

During the boot routine, the CMOS will search for the drives sequentially as they are listed in the boot sequence. When the floppy is detected, the light will light up, then go off as CMOS searches for the next drive in the sequence. So..if the light doesn't come on, the drive hasn't initialized and won't work. This can be caused by the cables, too, so it may not be a bad drive.

If you have another data cable (ribbon) you can try, that would be the first thing to try. One end of the cable will have a section with a twist in it...the boot floppy drive should be connected to that end of the cable. Some floppy cables have three connectors...the floppy drive you plan to boot to needs to be on the end connector. The other end, of course, goes to the floppy connector on the motherboard. Make sure both connectors are firmly seated.

Check the power cable, too. Remember that it's just opposite of the other drives...the red wire to the outside. It's easy to miss a pin on these connectors, so make sure your connection here is solid and you don't have a pin that's slipped under the connector.

Then let's look at the BIOS setup again.

In the Standard CMOS Setup: Check that Drive A is showing as "1.44M, 3.5in". Drive B should be "None" and Floppy 3 Mode Support should be "Disabled".

In BIOS Features Setup: Boot Sequence need to be "A, C". Swap Floppy Drive and Boot Up Floppy Seek should both be "Disabled". Floppy Disk Access Control needs to be "R/W".

If you find the cabling in good shape and all the settings in the BIOS are correct, it should boot directly to the floppy drive. If it still fails to initialize the drive, I'd be thinking the drive was bad.

As a side note, I have seen some brands of floppy diskettes that just wouldn't work for this while other brands would. I have no idea why this would matter, but apparently it does in some cases. Something to keep in mind...

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Alright so I got a new floppy drive and ribbon and hooked them up and still it did not flash at the start. The light on the cdrom does but not the floppy drives, Then it makes it all the way to DMI pool data and stops.(not even supposed to make it this far right?) I have set the bios options to boot A,C and made sure others were as you said, and it still doesn't load. I will try a different type of disc, but the fact that the light doesn't blink on startup, I think, says it all. Do you think there might be another bios setting wrong. Should the Hard disk boot from be on Pri-IDE-M or should this not matter when boot sequence is A,C . I know you said my board probably wouldn't have the cd drivers but is there a win 98 boot cd I could try? Or any more suggestions I will try anything. I really appreciate all your help its been great not having to feel like I am walking in the dark without a flashlight, So thanks.


P.S.It worked fine until he tried to install Win XP

[hdgodfrey]

Alright so I got a new floppy drive and ribbon and hooked them up and still it did not flash at the start. The light on the cdrom does but not the floppy drives, Then it makes it all the way to DMI pool data and stops.(not even supposed to make it this far right?) I have set the bios options to boot A,C and made sure others were as you said, and it still doesn't load. I will try a different type of disc, but the fact that the light doesn't blink on startup, I think, says it all. Do you think there might be another bios setting wrong. Should the Hard disk boot from be on Pri-IDE-M or should this not matter when boot sequence is A,C . I know you said my board probably wouldn't have the cd drivers but is there a win 98 boot cd I could try? Or any more suggestions I will try anything. I really appreciate all your help its been great not having to feel like I am walking in the dark without a flashlight, So thanks.


P.S.It worked fine until he tried to install Win XP

[wannabe1]

The Pri-IDE-M setting should be correct. It's telling the machine to look at the Primary IDE Master drive for boot instructions...which is what you want.

Just for the sake of saying it's been tried, try setting the boot sequence to C, A and see if it makes a difference. If it doesn't and you are still unable to access the floppy drive, we'll try some things using the XP disk and see if we can trick it into running the old setup application on the Windows 98 disk.

[hdgodfrey]

Ok tried it still nothing. So whats next. I have the xp startup cd and the win 98 cd.

[wannabe1]

I've set up a test box here so I can try this as we go along.

Let's see what you have on the HDD now. We're going to need a FAT32 partition for Win98 and I'm thinking you may have an NTFS partition (for XP) on there now.

Go back into the BIOS Setup and change the boot sequence to "CDROM, C, A".

Put the XP cd in the drive and restart. Watch for the prompt to "Press any key to boot to CD" and press the spacebar once when you see it.

When you see the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press "Enter" (to install), then F8 to accept the license agreement.

Tell me what you see in the box on the next screen.

[hdgodfrey]

YYYYEEEESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had to set The boot hard drive from to sec-IDE-M my cdrom and then boot sequence to cdrom,c,a and the xp cd got me past now its doing the setup for XP but I don't think the system will handle it should I switch to the 98 and try it??

[hdgodfrey]

IT says hit enter to continue install of xp, Hit F3 to exit without installing or hit R i think to use repair thing. what do I do. try the 98 cd or what?

[wannabe1]

Let's see how far it gets.

[hdgodfrey]

What should I hit?

[wannabe1]

We have some cabling issues to look at, too, but let's see if XP will install. I had it on the test box and it ran ok...the test box is an old Win98 platform.

[wannabe1]

Sorry...hit Enter

[hdgodfrey]

IT asked if I wanted to partiton the empty space or install windows XP I continued XP Install and what should I pick Fat or NTFS slow or other

[wannabe1]

NTFS and use the Full format option...not the quick one.

[hdgodfrey]

Alright Its about halfway through copying the files i'll let you know what happens when and if it finishes

[hdgodfrey]

Ok it finished and restarted and froze and DMI pool data again, which is what happened in the first place when he tried to install . what should I do I tried with cd in and out and with the boot hard drive back to PRI-ide-M and with SEC-IDE_M which is my CDrom. what should I do. use the cd to partiton the drive then put 98 on it or what?