hi, i have a computer that i havent used in a while, because alot of error messagwe come up when im on it and it doesnt work properly. however, i recently learned how to refromatt my harddrive, and i thought id give it a try on the old comp, to see if it got it up and running again. however, when i go to start it up, an error shows up saying there was an error reading floppy disc drive (this is before windows starts), and it says hit f1 to continue. ive tryed saving this to it, but it always says disk not ready (ive tryed changing floppy discs, but no luck) i dont know how this happened cos it was working fine before. thanks for ne help/advice u can give me

Hi, If you haven't used this computer for awhile, your problem may be your CMOS battery is dead, and your settings are lost for the devices. No to worry, I have worked with this problem before, you will want to enter the BIOS setup when your computer is booting (usually hitting the DEL key, or F2, F3 will take you there. You should see a message where you see to hit F1 to continue and maybe F2 to enter setup. Just look to see if the Floppy is enabled and it is set for the A: drive as a 1.44mb drive. Exit and save settings and you're good to go.

hello, i did what u said, but the settings were a;ready like that when i went into it...but i exited and saved ne way....but still no luck.....sill got the same msg: A: drive error press F1 to resume ne other i deas of whats goin on?....thanks alot for ur time

Make sure the data and power cables are connected properly to the floppy. If they are, try a new flopy drive - cheap and easy to install. Otherwise go back into the CMOS setup program in the BIOS and find where it says "boot sequence". Change it so it doesn't look for the floppy drive first, change it to C: first, see what happens.

Have you tried starting the PC with a win98se bootdisk, to see if you can get to the A: prompt? beansoup

Another thing to try..If the led is always lit on the Floppy drive, try reversing the data cable connection...The red stripe isn't always next to the power plug, on some floppy drives... beansoup

All the above are great tips. My concern is how long the computer has not been used. Has it been subject to being jarred or bumped. As noted by the others above, your cable may have come loose. You do want to check to see if the drive light is coming on when the computer starts to boot. Do you hear the floppy initialize on the boot sequence? It usually makes a sound hard to type, but something like "ehhhh ehhhh" :) I also agree with the above to go back into the BIOS setup and change, if needed, to boot, say C:,A:,CD-Rom. Just make sure the first boot device is not the A: drive and is not before the C: drive. One thing I didn't catch was if the drive does work after you press F1 and enter Windows. Also, I realize you checked to see if the drive was enabled, but is it set to be a 1.44mb drive? If it is using any setting other than this, you will have the same results you are getting now.