Floppy disc write protected,And now Floppy drive dont work??

[G.O.A.T]

I cant seem to format or save to ANY floppy disc. I tried to format an old floppy and it said "unable to format disc is write protected". So I buy new floppies and when I try to save to them or format them it says the same thing! Any ideas?

 

[Lonman]

That little plastic door thingy on the corner of the diskette... close it.

 

[Bytes Back]

Could be the switch in the floppy drive is duff, Try another floppy drive.

 

[G.O.A.T]

Ive now tried 2 boxes of floppies and 1 brand new box. All of the tabs in the corner are closed, I even tried with the tabs open.Nothing works,I still get the "write protected" message".

 

[Lonman]

Yeah, I agree with Bytes back, it sounds like the micro switch is busted in your floppy drive. Swap it out and you should be good to go.

 

[G.O.A.T]

So my floppy drive just quit recognizing thier was even a disc in it at all. I went and bought a brand new floppy drive....it dosent recognize a disc is in, says" please insert disc". Ive tried everything, made sure it was set right in the bios,made sure IDE cables are on right, reinstalled the floppy drive controller, bought new floppy discs. What the hell is going on?

I installed Win XP pro corparate on my moms comp, she has a new gateway P4 system. I called her and asked her to try a floppy and now shes getting the "write protected" message. Something is up and its obviously a Win XP problem.

Can someone PLEASE help? I have a college class and my homework needs to be saved on a floppy

 

[Lonman]

Dunno what to tell you. Mines working fine... has been since day one. I had some problems with my CDrom drives that I had to trouble shoot, but never my floppy. If you have an old boot floppy around, try booting to it... see if your motherboard is picking it up ok. Don't know what else to suggest... I'd say flash your bios, but w/o a floppy drive thats moot.

The only thing I can think of is that somehow your FDD controller got hosed somehow. Is device manager giving you any errors? Look at the attachement to see what I mean.

 

[G.O.A.T]

Ok my moms was just a bad disk...so I now know its not XP. My bios isnt booting with a boot floppy. Its a brand new floppy drive tho...... Oh well...I dunno what to do....I had 2 floppies and a dvd drive in 2 weeks...something is killing my drives. Maybe power supply....??

 

[Lonman]

Sounds like the board is dying... your drives are probably still good. You might try flashing your bios to see if you can bring it back at all. Open the case up and make sure there's no moisture or corrosion anywhere too.

 

[pc_tek]

take a look at your floppy drive light? is it on all of the time? If so cable is backwards. Make sure that the red wire on the floppy cable is facing opposite the power recepticle. On EIDE cables, most people remember that the red cable (#1 pin) is always towards the power recepticle, but it is backwards for floppy drives (red opposite power recepticle).

also try this: go to hardware devices in system properties and remove the floppy drive. If is just corrupted somehow, it should rebuild it the next boot. But if it is truly hosed and windows cant detect it, it will ccontinue to be deleted after you reboot.

if all cables are installed correctly and its a new drive, im leaning towards a bad controller.

 

[G.O.A.T]

Hey,

Yea Ive done all you suggested. It still dosent work. Today Im gonna go take the floppy drive to my moms and hook it to her comp. If it works there then I know its not the floppy drive. You mentioned the controller...what exactly would it mean if that was the problem? Would I need a new mobo?

Thanks for yur input

 

[Bytes Back]

Now I know you've almost certainly checked this but.............

Have you checked the floppy in the Bios is set to 1.44MB ?

 

[G.O.A.T]

Yup...its set to 1.44. Ive tried everything.......Im stumped!

 

[Bytes Back]

Changed the cable ?

 

[G.O.A.T]

Nope havent changed the cable....but Im gonna go hook it up on another comp here in a bit. That will tell be its either the controller or the cable. If the new drive is dead then something is killing my drives....that would proly point to the power suppply.

 

[Bytes Back]

I think if you try the cable an its alright then yes, the power supply next !