Floppy drive problem

[Beyond X]

I just posted above "No floppy connector in motherboards" in which I
referred to my new Floppy-Card reader combined drive which I installed
in my new Win XP Pro computer that does have a floppy connection header.
When I checked the Device Manager, both Floppy Disk controllers and
Floppy Disk Driver were OK (Working properly), so I thought Drive A was
working.
Now I inserted a disk into the drive and wanted to see the contents.
Alas, I got a message "Insert a disk into Drive A". I tested with
another disk, the result is same. It appears that as long as Windows XP
is concerned, the floppy drive was recognized and the drivers were
properly installed. Following the Trouble Shooting I uninstalled the
driver and rebooted, but the same frustrating situation continued. By
the way I confirmed that the Drive A is listed in BIOS.

I kind of feel ashamed in posting such a basic problem, but can anyone
suggest me something that I have missed before I conclude that the drive
is defective?

 

[Bob I]

Put the Floppy drive First in the BIOS Boot sequence, and then reboot.
It should cycle the drive and the read light should come on and then
off, before the system move on to booting from something else like the
HArd Drive. If that doesn't happen the controler isn't really seeing the
drive or it is not working properly.

 

[Sid Elbow]

Is the drive listed under <My Computer>?

Did you use the correct cable ? .... As I recall with floppy drives, the
cable to Drive-A has to have the "twist" .... that is some strands of
the flat cable are twisted over to get the drive-select right.

Another thing is that (again if I recall correctly) many floppy drives
don't or didn't have a connector key so that it was possible to get the
connector reversed. The drive would then seem to exist but wouldn't
recognise a diskette. Make sure that Pin-1 of the MB connector goes to
Pin-1 on the drive.

 

[Beyond X]

All of the suggestions were done, but the problem persisted.
Finally, although very unlikely, my last thought was the possibility of
a failure of the power cable. So I removed the existing cable and
switched to another available 4-pin connector. It worked. My apologies
for the fuss. I hope my experience might be helpful to someone somewhere
someday. Thanks to all folks for their thoughs and time.

 

[Buffalo]

All of the suggestions were done, but the problem persisted.
Finally, although very unlikely, my last thought was the possibility
of a failure of the power cable. So I removed the existing cable and
switched to another available 4-pin connector. It worked. My apologies
for the fuss. I hope my experience might be helpful to someone
somewhere someday. Thanks to all folks for their thoughs and time.

Thanks for posting the solution.
Buffalo