L800cxe floppy drive problem

Question

I have a L800cxe that is about 2 years old. It was making a very bad clicking sound and now won't even start up when I power it on (continues to click). I opened it up and it seems to be the 3.5 inch floppy because when I disconnect that device, the sound goes away. However, I believe that the floppy is the first device in the boot sequence and so I still can't boot up the PC (correct?, I didn't actually get to try this last night). My question is, how do I disable the floppy in the boot sequence when I can't even get to the system startup screen. I'm a neophyte when it comes to working on PC's, so pretend I know nothing.

I looked at the manual and it seems that maybe what I need to do is move the jumper to pins 2-3 to bypass the drives on startup, so I can get to a screen, but I'm not sure if this is right or not. Any thoughts?

Also, assuming it is the floppy, anyone have any thoughts on where I can get a new one or used one? I looked out on ebay, but what I'm not certain about is the standards in floppy drives. Do I need to get a floppy specifically for Dell Dimension PC's or will most any work for me?

Thanks for any and all advice.

LittleAdvice · Answer

chuxtable,

The floppy drive may not be the problem. Your system may just be looking for a boot disk in the absence of a bootable drive. The problem may be a hard drive problem. Download the diagft32.exe from the dell download site and create the boot disk from this file. See if the system will boot from this disk. If it does boot from this disk then run the diagnostics to test the hardware of the system for failures.

chuxtable · Answer

Thanks to both suggestions.  I was actually able to secure a floppy drive yesterday and was going to just do a swap first to see if that worked.  Question on that: Do I need a driver specifically for the new floppy drive (it was taken out of an old, non-working PC) or are the drivers pretty standard too?

NVRambo · Answer

Disconnect the drive (both power and data), then boot into BIOS (DEL).

Disable the diskette controller, then change the boot order to boot directly from the hard disk.

That should get you going until you buy another floppy drive. Most any floppy drive should work fine. You can buy it from Dell or somewhere like www.newegg.com , or even your local Circuit City or CompUSA if you have to have it immediately.

Good luck.

NVRambo · Answer

No drivers should be needed. Glad you got it straightened out.

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L800cxe floppy drive problem

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