I know this problem has been addressed before but my problem seems a bit diffrent. I encountered the problem when building a new system for my neighbor. it is a PIII 750 based system on an abit BE6II MB, new WD 40gig 7200 rpm drive, HP burner, and standard CDRom, matrox g400 vid card. the problem is that i was getting a floppy Failure at startup. the floppy drive was salvaged from her old system and was having the same problem then. so assuming the drive really was bad i pulled the floppy drive out of my server to get her computer up and running (hard to install windows with no floppy drive to boot from). when i put my floppy in her computer i got the same failure. so i switched the cable, same problem. scoured the bios for a missed parameter, nothing. then when i went to put my server back together i got a floppy failure on that! the floppy was known to be working five minutes before i took it out the first time. Whats going on with this? I scaned my system for viruses with NAV2001 and got nothing. is it possible for a virus to ruin a drive? i did swap in her old HD to see if i could boot the machine. Any help would be greatly apreciated.

When you say you switched the cable does that mean you tried a new cable or inverted the one you had? If the latter that may have screwed up the drive.

I swapped the cable for another one. I am begining to think that the Abit board may be bad. it recognizes the CDR as a "Flewitt Trackard *****giberish*****" and then none of the drives are accesable except the old HD (with win98) and the old CDRom in DOS and only the Old HD in windows. but that doesn't explain all the floppy problems in other machines (unless its a short somewhere that frys the drive when it is connected, which may be the case). BTW i tried my last good floppy in it this morning with only the new unformatted drive and the cdrom and killed it too... stupid of me. i am going to try and install windows with no floppy tonight off bootable cdroms (after i pick up some new floppy drives for my computers...

Hi, I had a similar problem and it was down to not connecting the cable correctly, I'm not saying this is the cause but please check that you are attaching the cable to the floppy drive on the end of the cable, ie after the cable splits. Also the red line to No1 on the drive, obvious I know!!!!!!!!! Hope this helps. Regards Alan..