Sorry for the dual post on this and the win9X board, but didn't want anyone who has the answer to miss it. Ok here's the problem, which occurs both on my home machine (running winXP) and a computer that we freshly built up at the shop. Hope somebody here can shed some light on it. The Floppy will not work in Windows. It works fine to boot up to it, works fine when in DOS (on the win98 machine). Once you start up windows, it stops working. Windows recognizes the drive, says no problems with it. When you put a disk in and try to read from it, it says it isn't formatted and must be formatted, keep in mind this happens with the same disk that we just used to boot up to DOS and install windows with. Happens with every disk, and when you try to format, gives an error saying it can't format it. Have tried going into safe mode and deleting the devices and letting windows reload them, no help there. Switched out the motherboard on the computer at the shop, same problem. Have switched floppy drives also, no difference. Did a re-install of windows, still the same problem. The drive does light up and acts like it is about to read from the drive, but never does. Please keep in mind, when replying, that the floppy drive works fine in DOS, but not in Windows. thank you very much, Scott

Whether the floppy works in dos or not, Replace the drive!

Sorry didnt catch that you already had done that.

Let me say something else, If you have your ribbon crossed to the floppy drive and turn on the computer with the disk in the drive it will trash the data on the disk. Then if you go back and swap ribbon around right and try the same disk it will not read because it ruined the data on the disk. Cant recall if it trashes the disk or not but I know it does the data.

This is what I'd think, in order: bad floppy disks IDE cable reversed Bad IDE cable Bad floppy drive bad floppy controller or connection pins bad motherboard bad copy of Windows I would try to read the disks on another machine, and I bet they read, right? Then, you know that other PC is isolated. If you changed all the hardware that the floppy drives through and reinstalled all the software that runs it, what remains? Well, I would think motherboard again, or a combination of some hardware. Like, if the controller is erratic, unlikely. And, The fact that works in DOS (98) in NOT Windows, amkes me think it's WINDOWS related, as maybe the DEVICE DRIVER aor any other part, as you said you REINSTALLED Windows, fine, but hopefully, it was ANOTHER copy of WINDOWS.

I did re-install, but it was the same copy. But it had worked fine with that same copy, but with a different motherboard / processor (well, nearly everything) on it. It's not the disks, I'm pretty sure I have the cable on right, It could be a bad cable though. One thing I did that makes it work correct for now is turn on floppy seek in the bios, it worked fine after I did that. Then I went back and turned it off, for testing purposes, and it still works fine. I was thinking it was the motherboard too, but with the same problem at the shop and us switching out motherboards and still getting the same problem, i'm not sure about that now. And there we use the same copy of windows installed on pretty much every machine we build, most have no problem. I dunno, I think it's gotta be something with that particular motherboard and that particular copy of windows, combined. Thanks, Scott