Can anyone help me???

I'm building my first pc. The relevant components are:

Gigabyte GA-7VKML motherboard with VIA KM266 chipset
AMD Athlon XP1800+ processor
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus8 UDMA133 30GB Hard Drive
TEAC 1.44MB FDD
256Mb Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM

No CD Drive, as I wish to use a USB CD Re-writer I have for a laptop.

All hardware is installed in the case, and I have successfully switched on the PC and checked the settings in the BIOS. Both the floppy and hard drives have been recognised correctly. After exiting the BIOS, the computer continues to search for a boot disc, from the floppy and then IDE-0 as per the BIOS settings. It is at this point that things go wrong. I get the following messages:

Searching for Boot Record from Floppy - not found
Searching for Boot Record from IDE 0 - not found
Searching for Boot Record from BBS 0 - OK

The screen then clears and proceeds to what I believe is setting up the on-board LAN card with:

Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (Build 082)
Copyright(c) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation
For Realtek RTL8139(x)/8130/810X PCI Fast Ethernet Controllerv2.12a (011210)
PXE-E61:Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF:Exiting PXE ROM

I then get:

Searching for Boot Record from SCSI - not found
Boot Failure
Reboot and select proper Boot device
or insert Boot Media in selected Boot device
Press any key when ready

Can anyone advise as to what is preventing the system from recognising the Windows 98 SE Boot disc in the floppy drive. It is OK as I can boot my laptop from this disc. I also created a fresh boot disc from my laptop which is also not recognised on the new pc.
All cables seem to be correctly attached to the drives. The floppy LED lights up when the system searches for the Boot Record on the floppy, and switches off again when it declares this as not found.

I notice that others have had similar problems to me, but they seem to relate to machines that have previously booted. Can anyone help with this new build?

Hi there

With a new home build PC nothing is guaranteed to work straight up.

Take you FDD interface cable and make sure that the floppy disk drive is connected
to the connector at the end of this cable, it will identified then as “A” drive. If it is in the centre position it will want to be the “B” drive. The other end of the cable should be connected to the motherboard. By the way the interface cable should have the longer section [from “B” drive connector] going to the MOBO.

Check also the power plug is correctly seated.

Please also check BIOS that you have set the A Drive as a 31/2 FDD 1.44Mb.

This should do you!

Brian,

Thanks for replying to my query.

The floppy drive connector is securely plugged into the motherboard and back of the disc drive. The interface cable, supplied with the motherboard, has only two ends. The end with the twist nearest it is attached to the floppy drive. The power cable is properly attached, and the BIOS recognises the A drive as being 1.44Mb 3.5.

Can you think of anything else that may be the source of the problem?

Many thanks.

Still unable to sort problem, but have been able to get a floopy from another machine to work in mine, and bonus, my floppy works in their machine, so everyone's happy.

Machine now up and running.......fingers crossed.

Strange happenings though.......