drive a: error

[chuckman45]

i have a small 486 computer which i was having some problems with win95 that was installed. so i reformated the drive. put in boot disk and restarted. now i get 2 beeps and this message.
a: drive error
press f1 to resume i pressed f1 then this error.
non-system disk or disk error
tried another boot disk same thing. (3)
drive a; doesn't even light
i checked all cables and everything is ok, non loose.
i when into bios and checked how it was booting it said a:,c:
there is no boot from d:drive
the d drive is no problem if i can get windows installed. any help as what to do.

[ktkendall]

My first course of action would be to use my bootdisk in another PC to rule out bad disk, if disk is good then you possibly have defective floppy drive. Is disk going in all the way and seating properly??

[chuckman45]

i tried 3 different boot disks. the disk goes in ok. but the light doesn't come on during bootup. would this be the drive or cable

[ktkendall]

Yes drive or cable can be defective, but don't suspect cable if no one has been inside messing around. Could be floppy controller which could have been the root of your problems to begin with. Now that youve formatted you can not check windows device manager though. Do you get any errors during POST and BIOS loading screen??

[chuckman45]

i changed the floppy drive only getting one beep now but drive still not working. must be the cable.

[Markoman01027]

If you are getting one beep, that is GOOD..Try another ribbon cable and you should be all set. You want to get one beep.

Post back if you need more assistance.

[GaryRouth]

On the floppy cable, make sure that the end with the twist is connected to the drive. Try the cable/drive in another computer if you can, just to rule out bad parts.

If you aren't seeing any display: check your video card: perhaps reseat it. Does the Bios hardware detect screen show when you turn the computer on?

What problems were you having before this?
. . . Gary

[chuckman45]

just to rule out one thing before i change cables. the cable i have has a red stripe on it. does that go to the right or left of the drive.

[Wheeler903]

The red stripe always goes to pin 1 on both motherboard and hard drive, there should be a small number 1 indicating this at one end of each slot. cya.

W