Floppy drive fails to work properly.

[joe111]

My floppy drive fails to feed big MS Word files. Smaller files went through OK. The blue screen came up asking me to insert a correct floppy diskette. I swap the floppy drive and its cable with the ones from another good PC. The same problem persists. Does this mean that the floppy controller on the motherboard is not working properly? What should be my solution? Thanks a lot.

[corvettedoctor]

Are you using the same brand of discs? At work we've run into a batch of bad "Verbatim datalife" mf discs. Both cover types of aluminum and black plastic type are affected. Some users report batches of over 50% faulty. Sony, Maxell, none of the others have ever been a prob. sincerely,

[Pantion]

I supposse the floppy worked perfectly and suddenly it began to get such errors? First run the general stuff to see if it isn't an OS problem: virus, scandisk, defrag, etc.

If it suddenly stop working correctly then it may be a malfunctioning floppy controller. Try re-installing the floppy by deleting from Device Manager and rebooting so win9x can autodetect it.

[Axel]

So - from your post it seems that the file size has something to do with it.

Two possibilities that come to mind is you may need to upgrade your BIOS ( not a bad idea given the date ) or you might have a virus on your system that needs to be flushed out.

What motherboard do you have? - Who manufactured the system?

[joe111]

Thanks for your reply.
First of all, it has nothing to do with the diskette itself because the same diskette works OK on other PC.
The lastest version of BIOS didn't make a difference.
The symtom deteriorates in the past few days. During BIOS boot up, now there is a message "Floppy disk failure (40)". Sometimes it is "Floppy disk failure (C0)". It's the numeric zero in the parentheses. This message remains even I remove the floppy drive and its cable from the motherboard.
It has occured a few times now that I have to repress the power on button in order to turn on the PC. The first pressing results in a short hum from the power supply unit as if it is starting to work and then it stops for no reason. I have to repress the botton again to make it work.
Any idea what's going on? Thanks.

[welsh wizard]

Itn sounds like you may have ahead alinment problem with your drive, try formating a disc and writeing any old stuff to it just to fill it then take floppy and see if the other systems can read it, if they fail then either replace drive or get it adjusted.
WW
Sorry didn't see your last post,
if power supply is humming then it could be going down, and it could be spiking the mobo and componets in your system, if you have access to a multi meter check out its out put on all lines including the ones to your mobo etc.
If you have not got access to multi meter see if any of your friends have a spare power supply you could use to check system with if hum goes away chances are the power supply is starting to fail, and you will need to check for damage to other parts of the system, http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif
WW

[This message has been edited by welsh wizard (edited 12-13-1999).]