Win98: Floppy Drive not ready

Oh yeah, I have also swapped out the Floppy drive and cable with new...and still the same result.

Just a thought, but you didn't mention checking the BIOS settings. Browse BIOS and see if any settings for the floppy drive can or need to be changed. Try loading Default Settings also!
Hope this helps!
caquino

Ok something else I forgot to write down here, The Bios settings were checked by myself and another Tech (in case I missed something).

Check the BIOS setting.
Can you boot from that drive.
Some have reversed the cable.

Some people have reported that renaming or removing the file
HSFLOP.PDR from their windows\system\iosubsys folder has solved their
problem with windows 98 not being able to access a floppy drive when
DOS can.
You can then restore that file using the system file checker.
Click Start>Run then type sfc.exe and click OK.

Be sure the Standard BIOS Setup is set correctly for your floppy drive (most are 3 1/2 inch, 1.44 MB). If you have more than one floppy drive, check to see if you have Floppy Drive swapping Enabled in CMOS. Are the floppies write protected; i.e., when looking at the back of the floppy with the metal door down, the little tab in the rectangular hole at the top, left of the floppy blocks light. In the Windows Explorer, right-click the floppy drive and format the floppy with the transfer system files option selected. Try another floppy drive. Replace the floppy cable. Sometimes they get nicked. If the floppy drive LED stays on all of the time, you have the flat cable plugged in backwards on either the motherboard or drive; the red stripe goesto pin 1. You could have a bad box of floppies. Try one of the suspect floppies in another computer after running a virus scan on them. Throw away that magnetic screwdriver.

I have had several systems where W98 would not access the floppy drive until I downloaded and installed the motherboard / chipset drivers.

I know that this is a problem with the Alladdin 5 chipset from ALI.

If you need help identifying the motherboard or chipset, check out the tools at either www.motherboards.org
or www.wimsbios.com

Chas

Hi,
O.K., here goes,
Since the floppy works in DOS and safe mode, it follows that there is nothing wrong with your cable\floppy drive.

I have 2 possibilitys for you,
1. I know you said you checked the BIOS, but I have seen this one overlookedbefore:
In(works for win 95/98/me, all versions)

2.You may have a conflicting driver, sometimes windows "thinks" it can share a resource when it really cant, this one would take some time since you seem to not have any "caution" flags in device manager, but, go there, (device manager) and click on the floppy, write down the resources it's using, then check it against the rest of the components, if anything is using any of the resources the floppy is using, change that, not the floppy, assuming the floppy is set to use the resources it's supposed to,: DMA=2 I/O=03F2-03F5 IRQ=6
gl
HTH
E.D.

This seems to be a recurring problem with win98. It sounds like you have done everything else to check the drive so here is one solution that I used that worked for me:

Go to c:\windows\system\iosybsys and rename hsflop.pdr to hsflop.old (or whatever you wish). Reboot and try the drive. Sometimes it works without the file and sometimes you need to replace it with a copy (use sfc to recover it if you need to).

good luck,

DrBob:>)

Shut the computer down and open the case,check the components in the PC.Check to see if the inside feels particularly hot.This could lead to problems accessing various pieces of hardware.

Check to make sure that cable from floppy controller is firmly inserted into the back of the floppy drive,also check the power connection between the power supply and back of floppy drive

has anyone actually been able to wreck a floppy with a magnetic screwdriver??

I got the magnetic screwdriver tip from www.colonel_klink.com. No wonder they lost the war!

(Actually the whole thing was cut and pasted from somewhere.)

DKlippert posted an interesting answer in regards to the HSFLOP.PDR file. That's the onemy money is on at this point. If the floppy works in DOS and in safe mode, but not in the full win98, you can eliminate hardware/BIOS causes. Therefore, the cause would have to be a Windows 98 issue.

If Dklipperts suggestion doesn't work, perhapsreloading Windows 98 over itself - replacing/repairing missing/damaged files - will do the trick. But wait, you already did that, and it didn't work.

What about an IRQ conflict?

Does it appear in Device Manager - with or without conflict indicator?

In Device Manager double click on Standard Floppy Disk Controller and/or Floppy Disk Drive. There's a Troubleshooter button in the Properties window. Have you followed that?

OK then. What if you disable all of the items in your Startup (using MSConfig) and boot to Normal mode. Is the drive accessible then? If so, it's one of the apps in your startup and you can figure out which one by adding them back in one at a time until it doesn't work again.

DrBob:>)

Ok this has been resolved, it seems there is a card to add a secondary parallel port. I checked this several times to verify there was no conflicting resources and there wasnt. I cant explain why it is causing this issue, but as soon as I pulled thecard the floppy drive now works.

So here's my offer to all that previously responded...to thank you for your assistance just drop a note here and I will split the points between you all...thanks again for all the great ideas!

md

Point value changed by question poster.

Mike,

While Windows did not report a resource conflict (IRQ Sharring)
I suspect that if you check things out at the DOS level the parallel port card was using an I/O address that was required for the FDD controller.

If possible, verify the default I/O addressing that the motherboard uses.
Then, compare that to the I/O settings on the port card.

It is possible, that just installing the parallel poer card in a different slot will eliminate the problem.

Chas

A few things could have done this:

1 bad floppy.
2 a virus.
3 hardware configuration error
4 lots and lots of heavy amounts of dust on the mother board.
5 intermittent transient electrical spikes.
6 bad floppy hardware

Mike,

Often times add-on I/O cards, controller cards, parallel/serial cards, etc. have jumpers or dip switches that set IRQ (and other) settings manually. I suspect that is what's happened in your case. You could verify this, set the card to avoid conflicts, and re-install it. (If you need it)

Look at this link for a detailed explanation.

http://www.techadvice.com/tech/P/Parallel_Cards.htm

http://www.siig.com/knowledge/10050839.HTM

http://www.sycard.com/linkio.html

REMOVE SPACES from the pasted URLs.

In addition, the manufacturer of the card, if it's printed on the card somewhere, most likely has an on-line manual youy could reference for such information.

Glad to see it resolved. This was indeed an interesting question.

So,what is the purpose of having a parallel card installed on the system,was it there to support additional devices.

I did not think of a similar problem that I encountered with a older modem card that had no conflicts,yet the sound card would not work.

Glad to know that you got the problem resolved

This question was closed by the author