Floppy seeks constantly... under XP only.

[DragonMaster]

The floppy drive on my father's X2 3800 system just started to get crazy under WinXP : The heads are seeking constantly (tick, tick, tick, tick...) without stopping until I go in the device manager delete the floppy drive. Under Fedora Core 5, the drive works perfectly... Lately, I was having problems formatting floppies, Windows would crash.

Any sugggestions?

I tried to delete both the floppy drive and floppy controller, I did SFC, chkdsk /r /f on all drives w/o errors, ran an AVG test, HouseCall, Spybot S&D, jv16 PowerTools, CCleaner, no strange processes are in the task manager.

Anyone knows what the problem is?

I suppose that repairing or reinstalling with the WinXP CD is the only solution?

[markkleb]

have you tried another floppy? does he really need it?
I would just disable it in the bios. Tell him he needs a card reader, ;-)

[Xero (1)ne]

always check the cable:wink:
ive had problems with floppies lots of times, mostly because the cable was on wrong, or bad

[Bio-Hazard]

Like Mark said, just disable the thing, floppies are pretty much useless anyway. Just keep a working one around to load Windows XP.............:(

[Xero (1)ne]

well then wuht will i do with all of these floppies i have?
....*puts floppies in bowl and pours milk on them and eats like cereal*
mmmmm.....floppy flakes :D, nummy!

thieeeeeeeeeeer GREAT!

im such a luser:roll:...

[werty316]

Only time I use a floppy drive is..... well I don't think I can remember that far back ;) Everything is a bootable CD these days.

[Kougar]

Windows crashes when you try to format a floppy?!? :roll:

Well you already ruled out other processes attempting to use it, so that pretty much leaves damaged OS files... especially since the unit works for you under linux.

If you select to Repair the windows installation with the Windows CD it shouldn't affect anything on the computer... but it might potentially fix the corrupted files causing the problem.

[liqnit]

I agree with others floppies are history get a card reader & disable in the BIOS .

it would be a lot easier then fixing it.

[DragonMaster]

Kougar, thanks for reading the topic completely, I'll try the repair feature this afternoon.

There are two places where you can select repair, is it the one when you're about to overwrite your windows installation, or at the welcome screen?

Windows crashes when you try to format a floppy?!?
It was last week, now, you start the computer, and once WinXP is started, it won't stop seeking.

For others who didn't read, the drive works perfectly under Linux, so I eliminate the cable possibility.

[Enigmachine]

Give it the werty316 cure and unplug it. :mrgreen:

Have you tried swapping it with another floppy drive? I know it works in linux, but maybe linux drivers have a different error state for the "floppy in drive" sensor... Dunno, just a tought.

[DragonMaster]

I haven't tried an other drive, but I could try one. When I deactivate or delete the drive in the device manager, it stops. The only difference being that if I delete it, it starts again after next boot.

[GIBSON]

Only time I use a floppy drive is..... well I don't think I can remember that far back ;) Everything is a bootable CD these days.
I had to use one to get my raid drivers installed...
Physically removed it afterwards, but xp kept bugging me about it when i shut the system down. Then disabled the floppy drive in the control panel.

[DragonMaster]

If you remove a floppy drive, you then need to put "None" in the CMOS panel of your BIOS, then somewhere else you have to disable the floppy controller, then in Windows, you DELETE the floppy controller. It will not detect the floppy controller and drive until you re-enable them in the BIOS.

[werty316]

A weird rare anomaly with some boards is that they need a floppy drive connected or the board becomes unstable.

[DragonMaster]

Hehe, I tried the first repair feature, it went in the console. The console's chkdsk told me that it found some errors, while the chkdsk-on-boot didn't tell anything.

Then I continued after the welcome window, and all I could do was to delete my Windows and D&S folders, or re-format. Is there ANY other repair mode with the Windows XP SP1 CD? What's that F2 thing when starting the installation?

Why isn't there anything like Win2000? (Put the CD, say that you want to install a new copy, select a current Windows partition, press R, then it copies new Windows files, then you have WIndows UPdate to run again and there you go!

I'd like some clear instructions because it's really annoying to unplug the sata port, wait for XP to load, press F6, re-connect HDD, load SATA drivers, find that it's not the good thing and reboot to try something else each times.

[DragonMaster]

OK, some news, the problem for the continuous seeking was the anti-virus, because it was trying to access the floppy drive. The problem is that I can't access to the floppy drive at all, and the anti-virus keeps retyring. All I get is "This floppy isn't formatted, format it now?", and I get this message no matter if I put a floppy in the drive or not.

The Windows setup can read the SATA floppy well.
I found that the repair option isn't available because there's something screwed up in the Windows installation. I found a few things about rebuilding boot.ini, but it did nothing in my case. I also found some info about copying a fresh copy of ntdetect.com and ntdlr.sys to c: it might be related to the fact that the installation won't boot until I unplug the SATA connector, and re-connect it only once I get the blue GUI screen. Summary : XP is screwed up and I can't fix the FDD problem without reinstalling. Everything else works pretty well.

[DragonMaster]

Solved!

I had to remove the C: partition, re-create it, re-install Windows and most apps, and since then, the repair feature is available with the WinXP CD, I don't need to unplug my HDD anymore to start the XP installation, the floppy drive works and things boot much faster.

[Kougar]

Good to hear you got everything back to normal! :)

[DragonMaster]

The XP reinstall did more than just bringing my floppy drive working again it seems. Like I told, I can now use the repair feature with the XP CD, I got a clean install and everything runs faster. The previous installation saw a lot of different problems since it was installed in March.

1st - HDD not always detected : Wasn't set in SATA I compatibility mode, so the mobo had trouble, and a related problem was fixed in a later BIOS release.
2nd - Front USB not working : A pin with no specific use in the Intel specs was used for different things on the MSI RD480 mobo(overcurrent) and Sonata II case connector(shield ground), making the computer crazy.
3rd - Crashing games : Ended up being various things I believe, probably Catalyst drivers and Windows' HDD backups, since updating video drivers and disabling the backup feature solved problems. Sometimes games were crashing, sometimes HDD and RAM were in 100% use and the game totally stopped working because of this
4th - Overheat : The old kind cooler with the X2 3800 rev. E4 isn't enough to run the TriCool rear case fan in Low speed, computer was crashing often.
5th - Every USB devices were working, except the keyboard, turned out that a CMOS reset was necessary, I had USB problems when it happened.
6th - Onboard sound turned choppy for some reason, I put an SBLive to use instead.
7th - Computer stopped booting twice, recuperation console's chkdsk was needed in both cases.
8th - Floppy was only reading, computer crashed when formatting.
9th - Antivirus got corrupted twice in the same week and floppy drive would think that unformatted disks were inserted, even if no floppy was present.

Yesterday : Reinstalled XP 5 times in a row, no problems anymore!
(1st time : Was getting an XP boot problem, boot menu was showing 2 different WinXPs
2nd time : No boot problem, but two XP entries : Found out that partition removal was necessary, not just formatting.
3rd : Removed partition, re-created it, installed XP, wouldn't boot
4th : Overwrite of last XP install, was working well, but since I configured manually the firewire connection with the Ethernet parameters during installation, I couldn't get Ethernet working ->XP doesn't allow to delete the TCP-IP protocol from a network connection like Win2000 does
5th : Removed partiton again, installed Windows XP, no boot problems, I didn't setup 1394 thinking that it was my onboard ethernet IC, then I could get Ethernet working.) I hate Windows XP...