cannot access floppy

I have a Gateway 500 2yr old came pre loaded with Win XP. Used floppy to make start-up and it worked OK.Now-2yrs later I cannot access any floppy either to read or write.I go to My Computer @ click on the A drive and a box pops up saying to insert a floppy disk. When I do,nothing happens-the box just stays,and is hard to get rid of. One time after some fiddling around,this message appeared: A:\is not accessable.The floppy controller reported an error that is not recognized by the floppy disk driver.Once out of dozens of times it read a disk-but never again.Can anyone please help?

 

Try updating the drivers from the manufacturer of either your PC or the manufacturer of the floppy drive. If you can't get them off of the manufactueres website, you can go to www.windriver.com or www.driverguide.com

Make sure they are the correct drivers!

 

Hi and welcome. Floppy drives do go bad.

Can you try to boot with a boot disk that should get you to an a: prompt (98 boot disk is probably easiest) to see if that will work?

 

Floppy drives don't need drivers

 

Oops, my mistake... lol.

As you can tell I don't have many problems with floppy drives and don't use them very often.

LOL

 

The best method of trouble shooting anything including computer problems is to try one thing at a time. That way if you do get a change in your situation or the problems is fixed you know which thing you did fixed it. It is seldom worthwhile to shot gun your repair attempts. that said, if you can not boot from your floppy, open up the case adn make sure tthat your cables are in order. All plugged in and not damaged. It might be advised to try unplugging them to inspect them. After plugging them back up, try your floppy again. By the way do this with the power turned off to the computer.

 

Hi guys & thanks for the quick responses. still stuck short of opening up case which I couldn't handle.Here are more clues which may help---as soon as I insert the disk the green activity lite comes on and wont go off unless the computer is shut off---if I try to close or cancel the "insert a disk" box it says (not responding)--and it gets mad if I insist and my screen goes white and big red letters say ACTIVE DESKTOP RECOVERY--WINDOWS GOT AN UNEXPECTED ERROR Maybe a club would be in order?

 

Well, realistically, it's not worth paying someone else to open the case, unless of course you'll pay my airfare, then that would be worth it . Floppy drives are almost extinct anyway. Whatever you need it for, you can use the cdrom.

 

Cheapest test