A floppy drive is not all that sturdy a device. If you open one up and take
a look at the heads you will see that they are on a pretty flimsy mount
that can easily become misaliged if you insert a floppy with a bent metal
slider. The heads can also become dirty.There are <cleaning > floppies that
can be used to clean the heads. If the heads have been moved out of
position you might be able to realign them but you could never really trust
them to work without errors.

It has been my experience that once a floppy starts to give you problems
and if you can not immediately rectify it with a  cleaning floppy or by
re-seating the cableing then it is time to replace it. A new Teac 3.5 inch
floppy drive can be purchased from Buy.com for as little as 15 dollars.

Mark Rode
The NoSpin Group

At 02:12 PM 6/6/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>i I did a complete virus scan with two seperate programs, checked the
>cables,don't have another floppy drive to swap out. and when i put a floppy
>in, and try to access drive, the green light runs for a bit then goes out and
>I get a  "device not ready error"
>Philippe Beaulieu

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