Cant read floppy drive but seen in BIOS

[illectric]

It shows the floppy drive, its getting power, but both in the start up(F8) and in windows i cant read whats in the drive. Windows(XP) it says please insert disk. In start up it says please make sure somethings in the drive to read and in the command prompt it says abort retry cancel.
I tried a second floppy drive same problem. Changed the cable...same problem. Please help.

 

[SkipCox]

Likely a shakey drive. Best bet is to spend 5 to 15 bucks and get a new floppy drive.

I keep extras at home for myself and customers and change them out about like they are free.

It's a neglected item and I've seen them so filled with dust you couldn't insert a disk.

Skip

http://home.comcast.net/~skip9/index.html

http://scc.i8.com

 

[pmonett]

Did the drive work before, or is this a new drive you just put in ? Did you try connecting the cable the other way around on the drive ? You say you tried a different drive and a different cable, so I think that should rule out a bad drive. Also, if your motherboard is recent, you should not be able to connect the floppy cable wrong on the motherboard, so that leaves only a bad orientation on the drive.

In theory, the cable should have pin 1 on the side of the power connector, however I have one drive where it's the other way around. If the cable is connected "normally", the drive shows up fine in BIOS and under Windows, but the light is always on and I cannot read anything either.
Switched the cable around and everything is normal.

Maybe you have the same problem, since you did not state that you had tried connecting the cable the other way around.

Pascal.

 

[illectric]

Ya i tried doing it the other way around and i get errors during the boot and it cant be seen. I will try again but i doubt it. Do you think it may have been this:
wsa checking out some specs on a car speaker i had which i placed close to the computer. The speaker is a very powerful magnet so it may have corrupted something on the motherboard???

 

[pmonett]

I definitely cannot answer such a question with any sort of authority, but I would suppose that a magnet would wipe your hard disk drive before damaging hardware.

I also suppose that, in order to damage hardware, the magnetic power of the car speaker would have to be quite powerful. And if it is powerful enough to interfere with normal electronic hardware, then how could blinkers function on the car (or stop lights for that matter) ?

No, if any damage was done from the loudspeaker, it would only be the floppy rendered unreadable - format and reuse. But that would not be an explanation for the drive malfunction.

Seems that Skip is right - you've got a faulty drive.

Pascal.