Hi, I'm working on a HP Pavillion 7955 machine with Windows XP installed. The floppy drive always asks if I want to format the floppy diskettes if I want to read them. So I thought it was just a bad drive and changed it. Now it asks me to insert the floppy into the drive...which I did already.

The floppy drive light looks normal (turns on when diskette is inserted and double clicked on...). I tried Safe Mode and even booting from it, but all failed. It's seen in the bios though

What could be the problem? Could it be the motherboard even though it's seen in the bios (maybe misreporting it)? I already tried another floppy ide cable from a working machine, so that is ruled out as well...

Thanks.

It appears to me that you have already checked everything you should do.

You changed the hardware part; the drive and the cable to the ones that you know should work and they didn't.
You tried the operation in normal Windows mode of safe mode and booting (to some basic DOS, as I imagine) without success.

The only thing remaining I can think of is, which was a case for me in the past, the physical placement - installation of the drive:
when placed in the chasis, the drive might be under abnormal physical pressure, from the top or from the side, as an example, in a way that the head cannot align and/or move correctly to read the diskette. The cause in this case could be like the chasis has been damaged or bent somehow. In some cases the bend can be so small that you won't easily notice by looking at it.

If you have tried working with the replaced drive connected to the PC but bare, i.e. not screwed into the chasis, this isn't your problem.

In that case, I guess you will have to conclude to the motherboard's floppy I/F being faulty.

Yep, tried testing out everything before I ordered the motherboard

Actually didn't try the method you suggested (duh...). It looks ok from the top since only the hard drive is above it and it should have enough spacing there. But the side is a good question because this is a "swinging bay" where I can take it out to unscrew the screws from the floppy and hard drives. Then when I'm done, I hook it inside a little and "swing" it back to locking position... I hope that didn't apply too much pressure to is because that's just how these machines are built.

Just one last question. Is it possible (very rare maybe?) that Windows could cause this problem? Software issue? I know I booted into Safe Mode, so it's probably not a third party software causing this.

I placed an order for the motherboard already. Will post an update to this when I replace it. *fingers-crossed*

Thanks.

Honestly I don't know, but usually I tend to think just anything is possible in troubleshooting. If the symptom was only reproduced in normal mode of Windows operation, such has to be doubted too. Missing or corrupt system file can be a problem; this type of accident was fairly common (resulting in random unstableness, not necessarily a floppy drive error) in the Windows 9x age, simply because the system crashed a lot more often than in Windows 2000/XP.

As you have tried with safe mode and also booting from diskette, that possibility would be crossed out. You may want to try some CD bootable type of Linux to triple check that the software/OS isn't the cause.

looks like your floppy drive is dead. It's readers are dead to be precise. You need to buy an extra floppy drive or easier, buy a USB flash disc.

xboxrulz

@xboxrulz: At this time, I don't think it's the floppy drive issue anymore as I have already tried using TWO other floppy drives with the same result (asking me to insert diskette when one is in there already).

More fun... I will try using Knoppix (hopefully has floppy drive) and see if it can see anything. Since you mentioned corrupted files, I will take a crack at using SFC also to see if it finds any files missing/corrupted.

Thanks.