Newlt built pc, cant boot to floppy....

[damienb]

Hi all,

Just built a PC and are have a few problems with the hard disk. I want to run a diagnosis from floppy but for some reason it wont boot to the floppy disk.

I have tried to boot to a Win98 boot disk as well which I have used before and know works. It didn't boot to it.

Any ideas??

Damien

 

[Rick]

The most obvious problem could be your boot order. You'll need to specify the floppy (or perhaps removeable drives) FIRST in the BIOS, then CD-ROM, Hard Drive, PCI cards etc... last.

If that sounds silly to you, then does your floppy light stay on with no disk in after you turn the PC on? It could be the cable or how it was plugged in.

If there are any doubts your floppies could be bad (as they do go bad frequently), create a new one using a self-install image from www.bootdisk.com

 

[damienb]

Yes!! I thought this was really weird!! The light on the drive stays on regardless of there being a disk on it or not.

The default boot sequence is floppy, hard disk, CD. I have checked that.

The floppy drive cable I used is what came with my brand new Giga-Byte motherboard.

I have checked the disks in another desktop machine and they work fine.

 

[Rick]

A backwards floppy cable is the most likely cause for the light being on.

Always make sure to line up pin 1 of each floppy connector with pin 1 of the motherboard, by attaching the cable so that the red wire on one edge of the ribbon cable connects to pin 1 of each device. On some drives it can be hard to figure out which end of the header is pin 1, which is why I recommend that you examine the drive before physically installing it.

Many 3.5" floppy drives today are not keyed to prevent upside down connection of the floppy drive cable. This means that it is possible to connect the cable upside-down, and then of course the drive will not work. In most cases this will not cause permanent damage. If when you boot up the PC the floppy drive activity LED comes on and stays on, this is a dead giveaway that you have done this. Reverse the connector. http://www.pcguide.com/proc/config/fdd-c.html