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Old 04-13-2009, 01:36 AM   #2 (permalink)
OldGrayGary
Mentor, Microsoft Support
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Woodland Hills, CA
Posts: 2,240
OS: Windows 98se/2000/XP/Vista


Re: Floppy drive wont work..

Hi kingstehlin


The odds are higher that the problem lies in one bad floppy drive than in a dozen bad diskettes. See if a friend has an extra floppy drive you can borrow to try. You can test your current drive by attaching it to another PC & seeing if it reads diskettes OK there. If not, it might be time to replace the drive. You can test your diskettes in the same manner: see if they read OK when inserted into the floppy drive of another PC.

There is a common problem reading diskettes in Windows-XP, involving a problematic Registry entry concerning 'upper-filters' and 'lower-filters' for the floppy drive --- but I've never heard of this problem occuring in Windows 98/98se/Me. (The XP problem is usually caused by a CD/DVD-burning software glitch).

There's an old tip from several years ago here at TSF, by Terrister, concerning trouble reading floppies in Win95/98. It might help - can't hurt to try:
Quote:
Go to my computer, right click on the floppy drive. Choose tools tab. Click on error checking button. See if this fixes the disk.
Also - if you've been inside your PC's case at all, make sure that you didn't inadvertently put the floppy cable back in either upside down (possible on non-'keyed' floppy cables ... also, if the floppy cable has a red stripe on one side, that side should connect to Pin 1 on both the drive connector and the motherboard connector) or backwards (some floppy cables have a 'twist' in them -- that end goes into the floppy drive).

Best of luck
. . . Gary
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