Floppy Drive on Xp Home

Now, I'm assuming the cable is correctly mounted (i.e. the red stripe on the inside / or located at pin 1 as marked on the FDD - otherwise it's no wonder the light comes on and never goes off!  If the cables are correct, I would tip mechanical failure.

I would say either the drive is bad - or - the heads are just jammed (mechanical).  Try inserting a disk, then turning the PC on (but don't set the BIOS to boot from FDD).  Does the READING eventually stop?  Try inserting and removing the Disk several times.  Does that help?  I had a disk once that lost the metal protector (for the disk) inside an FDD and then got jammed all the way in the back by the next disk.

Either take out the FDD and take it apart to see if anything is amiss or just buy a new one.

basically I am doing volentary work for a library and on some of there computers there floppy disk drives keep reading if people double click on the floppy disk icon under my computer and it keeps reading and I know in xp pro it prompts you there is no media in the drive and I was wondering if there was some kind of a fix ie a registry alteration that could be made to solve this. Unless it is a hard ware problem like you suggested with regards to the cable. However I do not think they will allow me to start taking there computers apart.

If it is as you suggest, a software issue, and since you mention the registry:-

You could do a search of the registry for the string A:  If this appears in a MRU (most recently used) context#, you could edit it to read C: instead.  (Usual dire warning about using the Registry).  One thing to be careful of: your current search for A: will probably appear in the registry search results.  Leave this one alone otherwise you are pulling the rug from under yourself.

#you will see a list a b c d e, with various entries beside it.  If one of them says A:\something, look at it and ask whether it is the problem.  If so, change it to an inocuous expendable file you know exists on the hard drive.

Sounds like some stupid antivirus software trying to protect you. Can you disable any such activity and see if that helps?
/RID

Is there a 'Number of Retries' property for the drive?  Sounds like it might be infinent or very high.  A low number would normally suffice and you can increase it, at will, if you have a particularly problematic floppy disk that you are attempting to brute force read.
 

Thanks for all the suggestions and recomendations ! I just wanted to let you know that I wont be able to give these things a go until January and am not sure on how I would go abouts splitting the points until I know which suggestions work and which ones don't.

Any ideas on what a good way of doing this would be very much appreciated !

not really any ideas but what type of PC is it HP    DELL    COMPAQ    GENERIC   MODDED???
since my dad has a similar problem  but it is when logging off and well nothing is using the drive but it goes and tries reading nothing for no reason  BTW it is a dell so that is most likely the reason for his and there is no whay i am going to call dell up again and talk to them for another 4 hours

CF101

Maybe you have to go to help or post a q in CS  to ask a mod to help close this q

I think this one got forgotten.  Has gecko au2003 forgotten to award the points, or is this still open for discussion?  My original comment should have solved this one:

"Now, I'm assuming the cable is correctly mounted (i.e. the red stripe on the inside / or located at pin 1 as marked on the FDD - otherwise it's no wonder the light comes on and never goes off!  If the cables are correct, I would tip mechanical failure.

I would say either the drive is bad - or - the heads are just jammed (mechanical).  Try inserting a disk, then turning the PC on (but don't set the BIOS to boot from FDD).  Does the READING eventually stop?  Try inserting and removing the Disk several times.  Does that help?  I had a disk once that lost the metal protector (for the disk) inside an FDD and then got jammed all the way in the back by the next disk.

Either take out the FDD and take it apart to see if anything is amiss or just buy a new one."

No it seems like a hit and run he jst left now and wants CV's to clean this up  either that  or i think he reallly messed up his computer big time so it can't get online anymore!!!


????


CF101

I just wanted to say thank you for the help and effort, however I have been ill over the past few days and no I did not run away from this question and expected a clean up !!

I am going to split the points.

I did not expect a clean up I mean !!