Hello, had a problem trying to install 3.11. A few days ago the putter had DOS 6.22 and 3.11 but because of some software probs had to format the C: drive.
I installed DoS 5.0 and tryed to install 3.11 again but then my A: drive kept saying "General failure reading drive A Abort, Retry, Fail"
Any other disk I put in says the same thing.
I inspected the cables to the A drive and it's secure, so why doesn't it read it?
The little lite comes on and I hear it working.

could be one of two probs either the drive
has gone or the disks
try putting a blank disk in and seeing if it does the same thing or says invalid system disk
or try the disks in another comp

I put in a formatted blank disk and from the C: prompt it finnaly went to the A: prompt once, then when I tryed to install 3.11 it said again "General falure...."
The disks work on my other 486 fine.

Sounds like your drive is on the way out.

Try booting with any boot disk and then try to format a blank disk from there. If you still have no joy - get a new drive, they are not that expensive.

Good Luck . . .

:o)

ctcnetwork, I tryed what you said and it didn't format but did recconize it as a 1.44 floppy.
I put in another 3.5 inch drive and changed the ribbon and now it says "seek error reading drive A, Abort, Retry, Fail"

If I try to format a blank or not blank disk it says " Invalid media or track 0 bad - disk unusable".

Any Ideas?

Ok I fixed it. was just a small adapter on the A: drives power.....replaced it.