at start-up it tells me that the A drive is disabled

[kenbhangen]

Morning, I have a client with an older computer with win98 loaded. At start-up it tells me that the A drive is disabled. After enabling the drive and restarting, it tells me that the drive is still disabled and yes, I did save the changes on the set-up page, any ideas.
Thanks

 

[gus669]

Did you try swapping out the Floppy drive, and then the cable. Or taking the Drive out, plus the cable and trying it in another computer. How bout just reseating the cable to the floppy and controller. Is the floppy showing a steady green light during boot up or does it flash on then off? Its usually is supposed to flash on then off. If it stays green during boot up, then the cable needs to be reversed on the drive.

Try to narrow it down to the Controller on the Mobo. More than likely the Floppy drive has gone bad.

 

[tf1]

I hate floppies. They were introduced in 1980 and it has remained unchanged for almost 25 years. They are out-dated and unreliable. Scrap it: for about twice the cost of a new floppy drive, you can get a 128MB USB flash memory key: that's about 90 times the storage!

Regards: tf1

 

[edfair]

Do you have a choice in BIOS for enabling "seek on boot"? Failure to seek during POST may indicate the source of the problem. May be a bad drive, can be cable, but can be the M/B also if it is an integrated controller. But reseating the cable on both ends can sometimes break through contamination that blocks signals.

Sorry tf1, but they were before that. And definitely not unchanged. My first, used at that, was 140k.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[tf1]

Ed,

I was considering the 3½" floppy in its current guise rather than going back to 5¼" or 8" format! Those 'floppies' really were floppy.

Regards: tf1

 

[paparazi]

kenbhangen
Very likely just not sellected (enabled) make sure you choose 3.5inch floppy drive A in the bios if that's what you have.
Usually first bios screen (press Delete or F1/F2 on initial boot after graphics card display to enter bios setup)
Martin


We like members to GIVE and not just TAKE.
Participate and help others.

 

[mikker]

I also had that problem once. In the BIOS where it says floppy seek and floppy swap. I had to enable both. Don't know why because seek is the only one that is supposed to be enabled but it fixed my problem.

 

[wdgriggs]

Another, rare, possibility is you have a 2.88mb floppy drive. If the drive used to work in this system check bios for a 3-1/2 2.88MB floppy.

Cable/Drive seems to be more reasonable problem.