My much loved old laptop is used by my son at school and unfortunately, it has ceased to be able to access the A drive. The manufacturer has sent me a replacement but that is inaccessible too. Going into DOS Typing A: takes me in to the A drive with A:\ but typing Dir gives "Read Fault Error Reading Drive A, Abort, Retry, Fail" Hitting fail responds "Volume in drive A has no label" In Windows (95A) it responds: " A:\ is not accessible. The system cannot read the specified device" Going into device manager/properties, it says the device is working correctly When you go into the A drive in windows through my computer there is a lot of activity in the drive before it gives its message which suggests it is at least connected to the rest of the system. I have tried different disks to no avail. Thanks Andrew Any pointers, suggestions? Thanks Andrew

Hi Andrew, hello everyone, Sounds as though the settings in the BIOS may be incorrect. Ensure the the floppy is set as a 1.44MB drive. Also ensure that the FDD, floppy disk controller, is set to Enabled. Best Regards, Mesich

If the manufacturer sent you a ~new~ drive, and it's responding in the same way as the troubled drive, it's either the bios settings, the floppy controller, or the cables. If it's related to the bios settings, it's worth it to consider the cmos battery as a viable suspect amongst the others. Also, is the laptop being run on the AC adaptor or the battery pack?

It could also be the power cable putting out too much power to the FD which fries it.I lost 3 drives this way.You'll have to repair or replace the power supply to fix this.