At 09:19 AM 03/09/2000 , Ron Jobbe wrote:
>I am trying to fix an odd problem.  I have a system that I could not read from the
>floppy drive after the system boots, but will boot from a floppy and successfully
>operate.  In separate steps, I swapped the ribbon cable, the floppy drive and then
>disabled the onboard floppy controller and installed an old controller in an expansion
>slot (all parts are known to work).  The problem still persists after all of this.  Any
>helpful suggestions?
>
>The system is a generic build with:  Intel AN430TX MB, Intel P5-166 Classic, 32 Mb
>SDRAM, Quantum 3 Gb HD, Toshiba CD-ROM, Cirrus Logic video, etc.


It is a problem I have never encountered.  In that you have verified that
the hardware is not an issue, the floppy drive works as a boot device,
then I would suspect your operating system has been fouled.

Since you have not mentioned the operating system, let us assume it
is either Windows95/98, (since it is the most used OS by a large margin).
Have you checked the driver for the floppy controller in Device Manager?
Verify that you do not have a resource conflict and/or an IRQ sharing
situation.  Windows98 has a bad habit of sharing IRQs on devices
that will not accept it.  Also, Win98 has a tendency to randomly use
IRQs and sometimes the IRQ will not work with certain devices.  The
floppy controller should be on IRQ6.  If it has been radically moved
up or down that is probably your problem.

If the driver appears to have no problems in device manager, then
next thing to check is will the floppy work fine in DOS.  Start the
PC, press F8 as the system Boots to the operating system,
(you will see "Starting Win98..." or "Staring Win95...").  You will
have the command menu appear.  Choose "Command Prompt."

Now, try to read and write to a floppy disk.  If this works, then
you have a bad install of WIndows.  You can first try to just reinstall
Windows over the existing installation, this will take less than an
hour.  The procedure is exactly the same as a new install, except
it will keep all your existing settings.  See our Guide to Installing
Win95  or Win98 in the FAQ section of the web site:
     http://nospin.com/pc/faqs.html

If this did not solve the issue, then you have a registry problem.
The easiest solution is to delete the registry files.  Start Windows
and in Windows Explorer, delete both USER.DAT and SYSTEM.DAT
in the Windows folder:  C:\Windows.   You will also want to delete
any other files that are nearly the same size as these files and
named SYSTEM.***   or  USER.*** , (where the .*** can be anything).
These are backups of the registry.

Now, boot with your floppy and reinstall your operating system.  That
should solve the problem...  or at least it would be my best guess.

    Bob Wright
The NOSPIN Group

                Curious about the people moderating your
                   messages? Visit our staff web site:
                     http://nospin.com/pc/staff.html