NZFF

I need to use the floppy drive to install this fresh win xp and reformat, sadly I copied the needed data on to 6 discs only to find my floppy drive has problems.

When I put a floppy disc in then click A drive in explorer it said it's not formatted and asks me If I want to format, If I press yes it says "no disk in A drive" (a is assigned my floppy drive of course) the odd thing is the disk worked perrfectly in my parents' pc, yet after it had been in mine it came up with the same format error, but when I clicked yes on my parents' pc it actually did a reformat of it.


So I installed an old floppy drive into my pc instead, same thing happend until I plugged it into the other available plug on the same IDE cable (just a little furthur down the cable). with it plugged in there it just says "insert disc into drive A" even when there's a disk in there.


This must be a problem with my pc not the drive then, any way I can fix it?

Thanks
James

Geez I wish you lived closer I'd pop over and help ya. Anyway, why are you having to use a floppy to install XP? My case doesn't even have floppy, never missed it.

Can't you just set the CD rom as the first boot device then follow the install steps from there?

You mention that you have it plugged into an IDE cable? Floppys use a smaller white plug with a only a few (yellow/black/red maybe) wires, not the wide IDE cable. It plugs into a different place to the IDE connectors (alongside these normally).

Good luck!

the reason he is using floppy drives to install xp would be with this
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... 5AFEE126D8

or something similar

yeah i'm useing the flopys to try and get the cd bott thingy going. I think I am about to give up and try installing and reformating from the desktop here, if its even possible.

I think the yellow black and red plug is for the power Amtt, the IDE cable (well it looks like one) does plug into its own place on the mobo I think.

Has no one ever encounterd this error?

Yes, I was confusing the power lead with the IDE cable. Ijust took a look on the kids' PC, sorry.

Going back to trying it from the CD, try the suggestion gokanru suggested in the other thread this afternoon. Put the CD in and select to install XP?

you can't format from windows- it's just a repair function

remember, the power cable faces with the clip side down, and the IDE cable always has the red wire facing towards the power cable.

If I were you, I would try putting your floppy drives into your parents computer (with their wire) to see if they are at fault. Perhaps it could be a faulty data cable?