Floppy Drive Problem

Question

I have a Dell XPS 410 that I ordered (in May) without a floppy drive.  I had Vista installed along with 2GB RAM and the 6600 Intel dual core processor.  I have installed a 3.5 inch floppy and I can't get it to work.   I purchased the floppy from Best Buy (Dynex brand) and installed it as normal.  Went to system setup during the boot process and activated the drive.  Boot into Vista and the drive shows up in Windows Explorer.  All seems okay.  I put in a disc and double click the A: drive icon and the green light on the drive lights up and the disc starts making the typical noises.  After about 30 seconds I get and error message  'A:\ is not accessible.  The request could not be completed because of an I/O device error.'   I checked the discs on another computer and they work fine.  I take a floppy drive out of another computer and install in the XPS 410 and I get the same error message as before.   The device manager shows that the floppy drive is installed and working properly.  I uninstalled it and rebooted so that Vista could reintall the drivers.  Same problem.  I did some system diagnostics thru the DELL boot menu and find that the drive checks out okay and so does the mother board.   I am at a loss what the problem may be or what I might try next.  If anyone has any insight I would be greatful.   I do not want a USB floppy as I need the floppy drive to install drivers for Windows XP.  I have had enough of Vista and I have purchased 500GB Seagate drive on which I want to install XP.  Once done, I will disconnect the Vista HDD and leave it for later when Microsoft sorts out some of the problems.  Has anyone had success doing this?  I thought it would be a cakewalk, but so far it has proved to be not so straight forward.   Many Thanks for any of your expertise.   Bob M.

braymil · Answer

Well, I just solved my own problem. Get this!! I was looking at my old posts and came across the following from Stephenaron:

"Dell told me there is a conflict b/w having the tv tuner, floppy, and media reader. I have all 4 and for now have disabled the floppy drive."

This was in response to a problem I was having with my 13-in-1 media reader. I took out the TV tuner card and all was fine. Thanks Stephenaron!!! I was on the phone with DELL for a hour today and heard no such advice and really learned very little from their tech. Anyway, I am a happy camper.

If anyone has thoughts on installing XP on a seperate HDD, I would appreciate your thoughts. I am not really looking for a dual boot machince, I just do not want to mess with DELL's original installation of Vista.

Thanks again.

Bob M.

DELL-Chris M · Answer

braymil, Would you have the same issue if you put the TV Tuner card into a different PCI slot?

braymil · Answer

The TV tuner card is in a short (1 inch) PCIe slot. PCIe X1? Thus, I cannot move it to a different slot. Or can I? I was going to try your suggestion, but the interface is different.

Thanks for your comment.

Bob M.

Message Edited by braymil on 09-07-2007 08:37 PM

Locked Topics – Desktops General

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