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Computer Help Desk => Desktop Help => Topic started by: mbaldw on December 03, 2009, 03:44 hrs

Title: Floppy Drive Boot Problem
Post by: mbaldw on December 03, 2009, 03:44 hrs
Hi folks,

last night I removed the floppy drive from my PC (I never use it and plan to replace it with a caddy of USB and card reader slots).   The removal went fine, but upon firing the computer up it stopped during post saying it had encoundered an error "40" associated with the floppy drive.   I hit DEL to enter the BIOS and disabled boot option 3 (which was the floppy), saved and re-started.   Again, POST stopped.   Hitting F1 at this point completes the boot normally and gets me into Vista (Home Premium, X64 with SP1), which still shows an A: drive in Windows Explorer.   Is there anywhere else I should be looking to convince the computer that the floppy is gone?

Cheers,
Marc.
Title: Re: Floppy Drive Boot Problem
Post by: pat on December 03, 2009, 06:45 hrs
There may also be another option to disable the drive in BIOS. Check the first page of devices listed in BIOS and check to see if there is an option to either enable or disable the drive. Could also be something like "enable floppy seek" in there somewhere as well.
Title: Re: Floppy Drive Boot Problem
Post by: mbaldw on December 03, 2009, 07:01 hrs
Thanks Pat.   I obviously missed that - I'll go back in tonight and have a look.

Cheers,
Marc.
Title: Re: Floppy Drive Boot Problem
Post by: scuzzy on December 03, 2009, 15:15 hrs
Since you are receiving the error at POST, and windows continues to report an A drive, then the solution will be in the BIOS setup.

As Pat mentioned, fish around in the BIOS settings and disable anything floppy related. Disabling the floppy from the boot order/priority is not enough.
Title: Re: Floppy Drive Boot Problem
Post by: scuzzy on December 04, 2009, 00:33 hrs
There's nothing odd about that. My main system (see my signature) still uses a floppy drive, as I am required to turn in reports on a 3.5" floppy.
Title: Re: Floppy Drive Boot Problem
Post by: mbaldw on December 04, 2009, 03:04 hrs
Hi folks,

Pat and scuzzy were spot on - there was an option in the BIOS that I had overlooked.  Thanks guys.

JA - The computer isn't that old (just under 2 years) - it has a 2.66GHz dual core processor and 4 gig RAM so it doesn't have any problems running Vista (I'm actually looking to upgrade to Win 7 in the New Year).   I brought a floppy drive when I first got the PC because we had some instruments at work that save data to hand-held units that hold floppy disks.

Thanks again for the help.
Cheers,
Marc.