!!! No Floppy Drive !!!

[Toolman35]

I just got a new floppy in today and hooked it up and still no floppy. I got this new one because the old one seemed to have stoped working so I thought it must be bad...GUESS NOT!
at boot it keeps coming up.... floppy failed (40)....does this #40 mean anything?
I have the connectors in place..it does have a small 4 pin adapter right?? Fast help would be nice, thanks in advance.

Tim

[Toolman35]

OK,OK,....

I just went to the troubleshooting guide and now am looking and see my answer...I should have looked here a month ago...Let ya know what happens

[Toolman35]

I read the guide and I reversed the ribbon and disabled the seek floppy in BIOS, but this time when I booted up the light was out but no action on the floppy. after it finished booting it made a few noises and light flashed a couple time but when I put a disk in I got message floppy failed. try again or cancel..
any ideas???

[LawyerRon]

"it does have a small 4 pin adapter right??"
That should be the power lead off the power supply. It's white and and fits on four pins on the floppy drive.

If the light is on constantly when you turn the computer on, you've got the ribbon cable connector on backwards. Also, make sure the floppy drive is all the way and the end of the floppy cable, after the "twist", not before the twist.

Make sure the ends of the cable are not "reversed", meaning the "twist" in the cable should be closest to the floppy, not the motherboard. Finally, make sure the "correct" floppy size is selected in the bios, choices are 5-1/2", 720kb, etc, you want the 3-1/2" 1.4mb (or something to that effect) selected.

Personally, in your case, I would set the floppy as the first boot device in the bios for testing. When the computer boots, it should seek the floppy, the light should go on for about 2-3 seconds and then go out as the bios is now moving on and will start to seek an operating system on your hard drive.

If you have verified all of the above are correct, you either have a bad floppy drive controller on the motherboard, a bad floppy cable, or a bad floppy drive.

[mike breck]

Also, try a different power lead from the PSU in case the power lead is faulty. Make sure the power lead connector is plugged in the right way i.e. not upside-down.

Make sure the floppy drive controller is enabled in the BIOS.

[Toolman35]

still getting nothing..changed boot sequence,tried differant power supply connector...although I am getting activity when it comes up to win98 start screen then also after desktop loads...but when I try to access it it says A:\ denied, drive not accessible.

butnow I have new problems...on boot it tells me that EMM386 not installed
SYSTEM INI FILE damaged

sometimes.....
HIEM.SYS DETECTED UNRELIABLE
XMS MEMORY AT ADDRESS 002DADE(SOMETIMES IT COMES UP DIFFERANT ADDRESS)
HIEM.SYS IS MISSING, MAKE SURE THE FILE IS IN WIN DIRECTORY.

I know nothing about going in through dos...or even how to check or replace those files..
need help fast. Wife has some things she needs to back up.
also have q's about putting in a liteon burner..but that can wait. I really wanted to back the file up on CD.

be waiting
Thanks guys/gals

[Iman74]

You definetly want to delete the himem.sys file and replace it from the source of your OS. For example: if you have Win98 loaded, then extract the Himem.sys file from the CD and copy it to it's proper location.

Now onto the floppy. First you need to rule out all these what ifs. There too many things that could be the problem. Before we go over them letting you know the best way to test a floppy is not to use the OS; you should get a "known" working boot disk and use that as a tool to test. Go into your CMOS and set the floppy disk drive to be the first boot device. Now if you can't get the PC to boot to the floppy then you obviously have a problem. With that said here is what I have to say and suggest.

First keep in mind sometimes (not all the time) when a user puts on the floppy drive cable backwards, hence the result in the floppy drive not working and the light stays on, sometimes damages the floppy drive. With that said here are the steps I suggest.

First you will need another working PC to test with. Take out that floppy and plug it in the other PC. If that works then:
take the floppy cable from the problem PC and plug it into the other PC; if that works:
then most likely it's a setting in the CMOS or the floppy drive controler is bad.

[mike breck]

What Windows version do you have?

Hold down the Shift key when Windows is booting to go into Safe Mode. This will tells us if Himem.sys is present because it should check your Ram when Safe Mode is starting.

It could be faulty Ram. If you have more than one stick of Ram, then try each stick on it's own or swop in a known, good stick.

HTH

[Toolman35]

YES.....got the a drive working not sure what was wrong I went over it and checked all connections, didn't see anything but turned it on and it worked....
Now cd-rom is not working. looks good in device mgr.and it will play cd's but when I try to access it from my computer I get d: not ready?????

Mike , I will check that hiem file ..what exactly is that?
Also I ALWAYS get EMM 386 not installed-----XMS mang.not present..any ideas.

What I did was install a new (but slow)cpu Liteon cdrw and also new a drive..since then all things have been haywire. I got a amd500and replaced my old 350..mobo not good for any higher..had to reset clock speeds to 350 so it would work...
Leaving for work will check back later,
Thanks for all the help.

[Toolman35]

____________________________________________________
"You definetly want to delete the himem.sys file and replace it from the source of your OS. For example: if you have Win98 loaded, then extract the Himem.sys file from the CD and copy it to it's proper location"
_____________________________________________________


How do I do this and where do I put it???What location??

[Toolman35]

about this HIMEM.SYS...I found this in the msconfig box on start>run>msconfig...and also the EMM386.exe...both boxes are checked.

I am always getting the message on boot that these two file are not present or not installed. should these files be showing here???

[mike breck]

Hi again Toolman35,

So you've made a few changes. Maybe, the best thing to do is backtrack a little so you can get the system running stabily again.

Did these errors start to appear after you changed the CPU?

Try putting in the old 350Mhz CPU again with the correct multiplier and FSB and see if the errors continue.

What I did was install a new (but slow)cpu Liteon cdrw and also new a drive..since then all things have been haywire.

You say you added a LiteOn CD-RW and also a "new drive". What sort of drive? A new HD or the new floppy drive?

If it's a new HD, is it the Primary Master with the OS or just an added Slave for data?

Just to make everything clear, could you describe all the hardware changes you made to your system from when it was running well to the present situation.

This would be help greatly, because it's not very clear what changes you've made and exactly what hardware has been added.

[Toolman35]

the system started to have problems after I downloaded the KAzaa program(when I noticed locking up)which I have since uninstalled. Windows was locking up then when ctrl+alt+del...was pushed to see what was responding nothing would show(not responding). I would select a window and select end task and would lose everything even desktop...also when pc would bootup it would always get to windows screen the go black with the hourglass just timing continously. I would restart then it wanted to boot in safe mode, I would select 1 (normal)then it would boot.
That was befor this installation of new hardware, just to let you know where we are.
Here is what I installed:AMD K6-2 500 (replace 350)changed clock settings, new lite-on CD-rw, and new floppy. I did not have another ribbon so CD-RW is in slave. Everything is "operating" but not properly.... I went back and changed clock settings to the 350 settings finally got pc to see the floppy and cd-rw. but cr-rw will play roms but from "my computer" says D:\not ready drive not accessible. (I loaded software.)
The pc will bootup now but always get that message about the EMM 386 not installed and xms mgr not present. and windows still locks up occassionaly.
Also cannot backup files on A:\ or the D:\ ....I can load things on A:\ but when tryu to open it up it's in ZIP file,..Is that normal?
I have an old sys. IO built about 5-6 yrs ago.

FIC VA-503+
320 meg sdram (shows 327 on mem. count)
win 98 se
guillmot maxi gamer 16 bit AGP
wd 6.4 hd
soundblaster 128 pci
and have cable connection

I know this might be all over the place..but doing my best to give what I know. need to know anything else I will do my best.
I have a ATI 7500 64bit ddr coming, will this work in this system?
Thanks

[dave computer]

I think you should just reformat your hard drive. That always works with me.

[mike breck]

I think that might be the best course of action. Otherwise we might start blaming hardware when it's really Windows that is screwed up.

If you have more than one partition on the HD, you can save your important data to the other partition and then format C: and reinstall Windows.

If the problems reappear again, then we can start looking at hardware.

HTH

[Toolman35]

ok, guess thats what I will have to do...when you save things to your A drive should it save it as a zip file??

[mike breck]

If floppies are you're only backup method, then zipping you're data will allow you to save more on each floppy disk.

That's what I used to do years ago before I got a CD-RW drive.

[Toolman35]

Ok, I finally finished with re-formatting my HD. I have everything working ok (so far) except my CD-RW. I have loaded software that came with it but still get "E is not accessible" "The device is not ready". It will play the roms but when I put a recordable disc in and try to backup files I get that message. I am new to this CD-RW business so I probably doing something wrong.
Thanks for the help.
That software is the "NERO"

[jbutcher]

I am an Adaptec Direct-CD user and it sounds like you have not prepped the blank CD for writing. WIth Direct-CD you format the CD-R and then you can write to it like it was a floppy disk or hard disk. I am not sure how Nero works but I would assume that you would still have to format it.

[mike breck]

Yes,

jbutcher has hit the nail on the head.

You can write to CD-R discs immediately but if you wish to use CD-RW then (and use the disc as you would a use large floppy disk) then you have to start the InCd program and format it first.

Once the disc is formatted, you can drag and drop data straight onto it.

Like Direct-CD, InCd also gives you the option to start saving data "while" the disc is being formatted, but, rightly or wrongly, I have always preferred to completely format the disc, without interfering with it, and then use it when the formatting is finished.

But that's just me.

[Toolman35]

ok, you guys were right...had to format the disc. I bought a pack of "recordable discs..reads"cd-r"....but when I try to format the discs it won,t let me..
The burner came with 2 discs 1. is cd-r 2. is cd-rw. Why will it allow me to format the cd-rw's and not the cd-r??

You guys have been great help. I really appreciate it. Thanks!

[Redo40]

The cd-r is ready to use, you can only write to it once.

[Toolman35]

ok, let me try this thing now....just tried to copy to the cd-r's without formatting it(which it won't do anyway)and I get a popup reading E:\is not accessible
drive is not ready
what now?
I am on my way to work will look for this tomorrow. thanks again

[mike breck]

To copy anything to CD-Rs you have to start the program "Nero Burning Rom".

The Window will open and the SCSI/IDE bus will be scanned to find out where the Burner is and if it contains a disc.

Then the Wizard will start and you choose "Compile a new CD".

If it's data you are copying, then choose Data in the next step.

Then "Create a New Data CD" (the next time you add more data to the disk, it will probably tick the "Continue with an Existing Data CD" for you).

After you given your CD-R a named (for your convenience) you can then drag and drop files from the Right-Hand "File Browser" Pane into the Left-Hand CD-R pane.

When you finished selecting the files you want to copy, click the Burn button which is just under the "W" of the word "Windows"
in the Menu bar at the top of the Nero screen.

Then just follow the instructions.


HTH

[glc]

Is your CD-RW drive supported in your version of Nero? You may have to download an update. This would be a good idea anyway, because starting with version 5.5.9.2 (I believe) you have the option of using the Nero Express interface which is a lot more user friendly.

http://www.nero.com/en/content/recorder.html

I also had to update the firmware on a Lite-On 32x drive I installed a few months ago before it would work right.

[Toolman35]

Mike, I can't find the program named "nero burning rom"
All I have in the program mgr. is a "nero media guide"
I can now copy to the cd-rw's but still having trouble with the cd-r's. I know it's got to be simple, I am just new to this burning business. I typed in and tried to find "nero burning rom" but found nothing. DO you see something I am not doing?
At the bottom of desktop I have the icon"inCDWizard" which formats the cd-rw's so I can copy to them, but I see nothing about the cd-r's.
GLC, Iit looks like I have latest software. I have the 52x24x52 cd-rw. the box reads"smart-burn" smart-x" mt. rainier support.
not sure about all that but went to that link and saw nothing for this modle.

[glc]

Did you completely install the Nero that came with the drive? Sounds to me like you only installed InCD and didn't install Nero Burning Rom - these are 2 separate installs.

If it's installed, you will have a group in your Programs called "ahead Nero".

[Toolman35]

I don't know glc, I will have to check. That sounds like a good possibility. thanks