win2k hangs accessing floppy

[Johnny Ruin]

Hi,

I've got a win2k machine that hangs every time I try to access a
floppy. The light comes on and stays on as soon as I select the
drive in windows explorer and the machine is frozen.

When there's no floppy in drive, I get the "Please Insert a disc in
drive A" thing, the light comes on the drive and disappears when I hit
cancel. The machine is not hung.

I have tried this with several different floppies with the same
result.

The same cable/drive/floppy works fine when connected to a different
win2k machine.

I've looked at the bios of the hanging machine. Yep, it knows there's
a floppy drive connected and it's enabled. Didn't see any DMA
settings ... American Megatrends v2.53 on a ASUS P5GD1-VM.

I'm running out of ideas. Any suggestions

 

[Grinder]

Hi,

I've got a win2k machine that hangs every time I try to access a
floppy. The light comes on and stays on as soon as I select the
drive in windows explorer and the machine is frozen.

When there's no floppy in drive, I get the "Please Insert a disc in
drive A" thing, the light comes on the drive and disappears when I hit
cancel. The machine is not hung.

I have tried this with several different floppies with the same
result.

The same cable/drive/floppy works fine when connected to a different
win2k machine.

I've looked at the bios of the hanging machine. Yep, it knows there's
a floppy drive connected and it's enabled. Didn't see any DMA
settings ... American Megatrends v2.53 on a ASUS P5GD1-VM.

I'm running out of ideas. Any suggestions

I would try it with a different operating system. Boot up a Linux live
cd (Ubuntu/Knoppix) and see if accessing the floppy produces the same
results. That should nearly discriminate the problem as soft- or
hardware based.

 

[philo]

Hi,

I've got a win2k machine that hangs every time I try to access a
floppy. The light comes on and stays on as soon as I select the
drive in windows explorer and the machine is frozen.

When there's no floppy in drive, I get the "Please Insert a disc in
drive A" thing, the light comes on the drive and disappears when I hit
cancel. The machine is not hung.

I have tried this with several different floppies with the same
result.

The same cable/drive/floppy works fine when connected to a different
win2k machine.

I've looked at the bios of the hanging machine. Yep, it knows there's
a floppy drive connected and it's enabled. Didn't see any DMA
settings ... American Megatrends v2.53 on a ASUS P5GD1-VM.

I'm running out of ideas. Any suggestions

The first thing I'd do is just try to boot the machine with a win9x floppy.

If it boots fine...then the problem is in your OS and you should boot to
safe mode and delete
all instances of the floppy drive...reboot and let Windows re-detect.

If you cannot boot from the floppy then there's a hardware problem...
and since you said the drive worked OK in another system...then the floppy
controller on the mobo may be bad...
however on rare occasions I've seen other H/W conflicts...so you may want to
try the machine after removing all cards
(except video of course)

 

[ElJerid]

Hi,

I've got a win2k machine that hangs every time I try to access a
floppy. The light comes on and stays on as soon as I select the
drive in windows explorer and the machine is frozen.

When there's no floppy in drive, I get the "Please Insert a disc in
drive A" thing, the light comes on the drive and disappears when I hit
cancel. The machine is not hung.

I have tried this with several different floppies with the same
result.

The same cable/drive/floppy works fine when connected to a different
win2k machine.

I've looked at the bios of the hanging machine. Yep, it knows there's
a floppy drive connected and it's enabled. Didn't see any DMA
settings ... American Megatrends v2.53 on a ASUS P5GD1-VM.

I'm running out of ideas. Any suggestions

On many floppy drives, the data cable can be connected in two ways. Try to
invert the cable.

 

[Johnny Ruin]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I found a dos bootable floppy -
failed on this machine, worked on others. I pulled the only card in
the machine - a NetGear Gigabit adapter board and tried again. Still
no boot. I think I have to go with the 'bad mobo' diagnosis. It's
a little hard to accept, because the other hardware problems I've had
over the last 15 years of taking care of my own needs have been
resolved by one tweak or another. I don't think I've ever had a
board fail (there have been a few hard drives that died). I suppose
there's a first time for everything. Thanks again!

 

[kony]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I found a dos bootable floppy -
failed on this machine, worked on others. I pulled the only card in
the machine - a NetGear Gigabit adapter board and tried again. Still
no boot. I think I have to go with the 'bad mobo' diagnosis. It's
a little hard to accept, because the other hardware problems I've had
over the last 15 years of taking care of my own needs have been
resolved by one tweak or another. I don't think I've ever had a
board fail (there have been a few hard drives that died). I suppose
there's a first time for everything. Thanks again!

A good last attempt would be to take a different floppy
drive and cable and hook this combo up to that motherboard
and retry it.

 

[philo]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I found a dos bootable floppy -
failed on this machine, worked on others. I pulled the only card in
the machine - a NetGear Gigabit adapter board and tried again. Still
no boot. I think I have to go with the 'bad mobo' diagnosis. It's
a little hard to accept, because the other hardware problems I've had
over the last 15 years of taking care of my own needs have been
resolved by one tweak or another. I don't think I've ever had a
board fail (there have been a few hard drives that died). I suppose
there's a first time for everything. Thanks again!

It's rare...but the on-board floppy controller can fail.

Of course you can add a USB floppy I suppose