I have a Ibm laptop 560z. We recently formatted the hard drive and when we boot with the win 98 boot disk, the floppy runs, but does not read the disk. We hav tried several other disks thinking it was a disk problem. The sam results were obtained. Win98 states the drivers are loaded and is in working order. However, when we checked the BIOS...no floppy is acknowledged or highlighted. Now,if it is gone how do we get it back?

There should be an option in bios to enable it. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

Your problem with booting from a cold start with a "boot floppy" has NOTHING TO DO with Windblows, or any other system you may or may not have installed. The bios/setup must see the floppy, and in Thinkpads, there is no option for that The bios/setup must have the floppy in the boot order--I don't know how your bios works, but on any Thinkpads I've had, it's Start with the machine off, hold and CONTINUE TO HOLD the "F1" key while turning on the power and CONTINUE TO HOLD "F1" When the bios comes up, among other things, should be a box labled "startup". Select that, and hit ENTER Next, (in mine) you see two boxes marked "power on" and "network" Highlight "power on" and hit ENTER Next, should be a series of boxes, 1, 2 3, 4 Go down below and select Floppy, CDROM, and HDD-1, so that they are in the boxes 1, 2, 3 Hit OK to get out, and when you get to the "easy setup" (first) screen, hit "restart" Now, the other possibilities are A bad (nonfunctional) floppy drive A dirty floppy drive A bad startup floppy A startup floppy that may work on another machine, but that WILL NOT work in the Thinkpad, because of misalignment of heads, etc.

I have tried all of the above, still no luck. The floppy worked fine prior to formatting the hard drive. Now the floppy works, but does not read the disk. Any idea's?

I've forgotten what it says, but if the floppy drive is trying to read the disk, you should get some messages similar to "no boot media present etc etc Do you get that? IF it appears that the floppy drive is trying to read the disk, either you have a bad/ dirty/ out of alignment drive, or else the floppy disk is bad, or else the drive that you used to MAKE the floppy is out of alignment somewhat--so that other drives wont read the disk. If all else fails, you can buy used/ new floppy drives on eBay pretty reasonable. You should be able to download the "hardware maintenance manual" if you don't have one, and replace the drive.

I purchased new floppies, made a boot disk from a new external floppy connected to my desk top pc. Again the same thing occurs, the floppy whirls, but does not read disk. I took the external floppy disk drive, that came with the 560z, to the boys at IT at work. It checked out fine, they could not find the floppy being reconized within the bio's set up. They seem to think, the floppy drivers are missing.