Dead Floppy controllers?

[Bruce May]

I attempted to install an Epson 1240UP on my Win2K main machine. I used their updated drivers. The machine crashed during installation, and I could subsequently never get it to detect the Twain drivers. The problem is, my floppy drive is now dead. I can't get it do do anything with a DOS disk inserted. The floppy settings are ok in CMOS (going to "Setup", during harddrive boot process). Device Manager shows it to be AOK.

The thing is, I attempted to set up the scanner on a spare PC running Win2k, and exactly the same thing happened...crashed during install, no subsequent floppy access: dead cold. Also, no scanner/Twain detection.

I have set up the USB scanner on a Win98 laptop, and also on my main machine under RedHat 7.3. Works flawlessly on both. Of course, the floppy isn't found under Linux, either. I bought a USB floppy, but my BIOS (nor the latest upgrade) doesn't support USB floppy booting. The only way I can boot recovery programs, etc. is by making bootable CD-ROMS.

I have bought new cables, tried 5 different floppy drives, and reset CMOS on the spare machine.

Anyone heard of this weird problem? I really need clues, and my normal floppy function back!

[jmichna]

My recollection is that W2K (and WinXP) want to use their own twain drivers, and there really is no need to install the vendor's. Having said that...

Did you exactly follow the USB device installation instructions, to the letter? USB stuff can be extrememely sensitive to how oit gets installed e.g., hardware first then drivers, or drivers then hardware. If you don't do it just the way it's instructed, you may never get it to work. Then you have to start over

Don't know why your floppy should be FUBARed. Do you get a usable floppy if booting into SAFE mode? Maybe uninstall scanner drivers, physically uninstall scanner, remove any vestiges from the hardware profile, reboot, shut down, reattach scanner and let Windows do a hardware detection/update and see what it wants to load.
jmichna

[AllGamer]

Can you Boot from the floppy with a Boot Disk ?!?! :confused:

[Bruce May]

I have installed a new 40GB hard drive on the main machine, loaded Win2k and SP2. Nothing USB is installed. The drives on neither of the two machines I Fubar'd with the attempted scanner install will even attempt to boot anything, not OpenDos7.01, Win98 startup disk, nothing. They appear to be completely dead. I have disabled them in CMOS, rebooted, shut down, re-enabled them, and still no joy. When the floppy is enabled in CMOS, it shows AOK in Computer Manager. I reemphasize that on the computer that dual boot Linux, fd0 is not operable.

It seems that I have corrupted some firmware or otherwise killed the FD controllers on both machines. How the heck could this happen on a software install???

Thanks for your responses!

[omega31]

Maybe the cable got switched around? Try reversing the floppy cable. Worth a shot.

[jmichna]

Bruce,
This is a strange one. Maybe a resource conflict between USB root hub and FD0 wanting same IRQ? Can you check in System Information and see if any conflicts appear? Can you temporarily disable USB in BIOS, just to see what happens?
jmichna

[Bruce May]

Eureka! I'm in business, now. I reset CMOS, reconfigured it, disabled USB, and the floppy drive works. I booted OpenDOS from the drive. The only unusual thing is that the floppy is seen in Win2k as drive b:---the formerly-instally USB floppy had been seen as Drive a: by Windows. I have since re-enabled USB, and the onboard floppy drive still works. Now to check it out in Linux.

Thanks, guys, for the help! I had posted this problem to several other forums over the last 3 weeks, with only one non-helpful response on any of them.