XP Home ruined my floppy drive!

[Purple]

If I had not seen it myself, I would not have believed it…

A friend of mine built a new PC and installed XP Home on it. The new
PC is an athlon64 with a SATA hard drive. This means that he needs to
load the SATA drivers from a floppy because Microsoft fails to include
drivers in the install CD's anymore. Without a floppy drive and
driver, you cannot install Windows.

The first time he installed XP Home everything worked fine. We loaded
the SATA drivers from the floppy drive and finished the install.

But he had some problems with the PC and decided to do a second clean
install. This time the floppy drive failed to read his driver disk. He
tried several disks and none of them could be read in his drive. So he
took the disks to his old XP Home machine and found that the floppy
drive on that PC failed to work as well. Hmmm….

He brought the PC over to my house and we verified that the floppy
disks worked fine in my PC's. So we took the floppy drive out of his
PC and put it in mine and verified that the drive no longer reads
disks. The disk light comes on but the drive never registers a disc
inside.

This floppy drive is brand new and worked fine for one install of XP
Home. Since that install it no longer reads disks in at least two
PC's. I have never seen software ruin hardware but it appears that XP
Home is frying floppy drives. We checked the web and found many
Microsoft users experiencing floppy drive problems but the only "fix"
from Microsoft is to buy a new floppy drive…

So after cursing the Gods for a while, we are going to buy a box of
floppy drives and move on. (Since we cannot install XP Home without
the floppy.) Just wanted to share the experience so that others will
know they are not alone.

 

[null]

If I had not seen it myself, I would not have believed it…

A friend of mine built a new PC and installed XP Home on it. The new
PC is an athlon64 with a SATA hard drive. This means that he needs to
load the SATA drivers from a floppy because Microsoft fails to include
drivers in the install CD's anymore. Without a floppy drive and
driver, you cannot install Windows.

The first time he installed XP Home everything worked fine. We loaded
the SATA drivers from the floppy drive and finished the install.

But he had some problems with the PC and decided to do a second clean
install. This time the floppy drive failed to read his driver disk. He
tried several disks and none of them could be read in his drive. So he
took the disks to his old XP Home machine and found that the floppy
drive on that PC failed to work as well. Hmmm….

He brought the PC over to my house and we verified that the floppy
disks worked fine in my PC's. So we took the floppy drive out of his
PC and put it in mine and verified that the drive no longer reads
disks. The disk light comes on but the drive never registers a disc
inside.

This floppy drive is brand new and worked fine for one install of XP
Home. Since that install it no longer reads disks in at least two
PC's. I have never seen software ruin hardware but it appears that XP
Home is frying floppy drives. We checked the web and found many
Microsoft users experiencing floppy drive problems but the only "fix"
from Microsoft is to buy a new floppy drive…

So after cursing the Gods for a while, we are going to buy a box of
floppy drives and move on. (Since we cannot install XP Home without
the floppy.) Just wanted to share the experience so that others will
know they are not alone.

It is essentially impossible for an OS to destroy a floppy drive.

--
The reader should exercise normal caution and backup the Registry and
data files regularly, and especially before making any changes to their
PC, as well as performing regular virus and spyware scans. I am not
liable for problems or mishaps that occur from the reader using advice
posted here.

 

[Purple]

It is essentially impossible for an OS to destroy a floppy drive.

That is what i thought too but it has happened with two drives now and
i cannot think of another explanation. Care to offer one?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

If I had not seen it myself, I would not have believed it.

A friend of mine built a new PC and installed XP Home on it. The new
PC is an athlon64 with a SATA hard drive. This means that he needs to
load the SATA drivers from a floppy because Microsoft fails to include
drivers in the install CD's anymore. Without a floppy drive and
driver, you cannot install Windows.

The first time he installed XP Home everything worked fine. We loaded
the SATA drivers from the floppy drive and finished the install.

But he had some problems with the PC and decided to do a second clean
install. This time the floppy drive failed to read his driver disk. He
tried several disks and none of them could be read in his drive. So he
took the disks to his old XP Home machine and found that the floppy
drive on that PC failed to work as well. Hmmm..

He brought the PC over to my house and we verified that the floppy
disks worked fine in my PC's. So we took the floppy drive out of his
PC and put it in mine and verified that the drive no longer reads
disks. The disk light comes on but the drive never registers a disc
inside.

This floppy drive is brand new and worked fine for one install of XP
Home. Since that install it no longer reads disks in at least two
PC's. I have never seen software ruin hardware but it appears that XP
Home is frying floppy drives. We checked the web and found many
Microsoft users experiencing floppy drive problems but the only "fix"
from Microsoft is to buy a new floppy drive.

So after cursing the Gods for a while, we are going to buy a box of
floppy drives and move on. (Since we cannot install XP Home without
the floppy.) Just wanted to share the experience so that others will
know they are not alone.

You cannot pronounce a law ("XP Home ruined my floppy drive!")
based on a single observation. You might as well say "XP Home
blew the main fuse in my house", because a fuse happened to blow
while you were installing XP Home.

Unless you have a large number of observations that confirm your
suspicion, you must assume that the failure is pure coincidence. As
"null" commented, it is essentially impossible for an operating system
to ruin a floppy disk drive.

 

[NoNoBadDog!]

Okay, I'll type this slowly in case you can't read fast. An operating
System cannot destroy a piece of hardware. The floppy drive simply failed
on the second installation. Had the floppy failed on the 30th installation
or the 135th installation, you would not have blamed the OS. It just so
happened that the floppy failed don the second attempt to use it. The OS is
incapable of destroying hardware.

Bobby

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Why do you respond to my reply instead of the original post?
I basically said the same thing as you do!

 

[D.Currie]

That is what i thought too but it has happened with two drives now and
i cannot think of another explanation. Care to offer one?

Here's one: as floppy disks and floppy drives are becoming essentially
obsolete, quality is not a huge consideration. Last time I bought bulk
floppy disks, quite a few were dead on the first try, some fell apart --
literally -- after a few insertions, some failed after one or two boots, and
some are working after multiple uses over months. These were name brand
disks. Years ago, I would have expected floppy disk failure to be minimal.
But that was in the days when floppies were the back-up medium of choice,
and they had to be reliable.

A bad floppy disk could conceivably ruin a drive, or it could be that the
drive itself was just cheap and flawed. Manufacturers figure you're not
going to use it often, so they can get away with the cheapest floppy drives
possible. Even if it's under warranty, the chance of you bothering to return
it is slim, considering how cheap the replacements are.

 

[Mike H]

Your Jeep wouldn't start and mine used half a tank of gas.. wait until I get
a hold of B. Gates.. he has some explaining to do for all of this.. I
will never drive to Ottawa again at 120 kph after installing SP2.. this is
an absolute disgrace..

 

[Purple]

Here's one: as floppy disks and floppy drives are becoming essentially
obsolete, quality is not a huge consideration. Last time I bought bulk
floppy disks, quite a few were dead on the first try, some fell apart --
literally -- after a few insertions, some failed after one or two boots, and
some are working after multiple uses over months. These were name brand
disks. Years ago, I would have expected floppy disk failure to be minimal.
But that was in the days when floppies were the back-up medium of choice,
and they had to be reliable.

A bad floppy disk could conceivably ruin a drive, or it could be that the
drive itself was just cheap and flawed. Manufacturers figure you're not
going to use it often, so they can get away with the cheapest floppy drives
possible. Even if it's under warranty, the chance of you bothering to return
it is slim, considering how cheap the replacements are.

I have about 5 floppy drives in PC's in my house and none of them have
failed. Some have worked for years although I rarely use them.

My friend has had 3 drives in two computers and all of the drives have
failed after as little as 1 use. I suppose this could be coincidence
but it seems extreme to me to suggest some repeatable cause. Since the
only thing that is the same in both is systems in XP Home, it looked
like the most likely culprit.

Note that the disks are fine. They work in other floppy drives whereas
good disks do not work in the failed drives no matter what machine
they are in.

Microsoft has a knowledge base article on their lack of support for
some floppy drives in XP (so-called tri-mode drives) so I suspected an
OS problem or perhaps a motherboard problem. But the same drives that
worked at first now fail to work in other non-XP machines as well so I
concluded the floppy drives were toast. A mean-time-to-failure of 1 is
pretty hard to believe for such an old, stable piece of hardware.

Oh well, we will buy more floppy drives and keep trying.

Then again, none of this would even be necessary if Microsoft would
include SATA and RAID drivers on their install CD.

 

[Len Segal]

As long as you can specify Where to look for additional drivers, why not
burn them to a CD and use that when you need to insert the additional
drivers? [It's been so long since I had to add additional drivers, that I'm
no longer 100% positive that you can select the location other than "A:", so
I'm offering this suggestion under the assumption that the OS install will
let you specify location of drivers.]

 

[D.Currie]

I have about 5 floppy drives in PC's in my house and none of them have
failed. Some have worked for years although I rarely use them.

My friend has had 3 drives in two computers and all of the drives have
failed after as little as 1 use. I suppose this could be coincidence
but it seems extreme to me to suggest some repeatable cause. Since the
only thing that is the same in both is systems in XP Home, it looked
like the most likely culprit.

Note that the disks are fine. They work in other floppy drives whereas
good disks do not work in the failed drives no matter what machine
they are in.

The ones that have worked for years are older drives, made when floppies
were more important. The ones that failed are new, and I'll bet cheaper than
the old ones.

I've got ancient floppy drives that are still working, and new ones that are
flakey. If you look at a floppy drive that's a few years old and compare it
to a new one, the older one will seem to be better built, sturdier. Take 'em
apart, and you'll find the same differences inside. Newer ones have thinner
metal, more plastic, crummy soldering.

Microsoft has a knowledge base article on their lack of support for
some floppy drives in XP (so-called tri-mode drives) so I suspected an
OS problem or perhaps a motherboard problem.

But that problem doesn't kill the drives, and there's a fix for it.


But the same drives that

worked at first now fail to work in other non-XP machines as well so I
concluded the floppy drives were toast. A mean-time-to-failure of 1 is
pretty hard to believe for such an old, stable piece of hardware.

It's old technology and becoming obsolete. Manufacturers don't make much
money off of things like that, so they crank them out in bulk. Like modems,
too. Newer modems seem to fail a lot more now than they did years ago.
They're also a lot cheaper. If you're building a modem or a floppy drive
that you're going to sell for 5 bucks, you aren't going to waste a lot of
quality control or quality parts on them.

Oh well, we will buy more floppy drives and keep trying.

Then again, none of this would even be necessary if Microsoft would
include SATA and RAID drivers on their install CD.

The reason its not on the CD is that the core OS existed before SATA, and
the drivers aren't created by MS, they're supplied by the manufacturers. If
MS didn't have the drivers when they came out with XP, it's not on the disk.
I suppose they could put them on service packed editions, but I don't know
if they add things like that with later releases.

On the other hand, if your motherboard supports SATA properly, you don't
need to load the drivers. It's just a workaround for systems with an older
motherboard and/or bios where you need to install on the SATA drive. So in
theory the need for those drivers should disappear pretty quickly.

 

[Guest]

LOL Since I have on-site service, that means they'd fix my Jeep while
they're here too!!!! All praise Microsoft! ROFL.