Floppy Drives

[skinnedduck]

Floppy Drive(s)are messed up: Desktop with built in Floppy: green lite comes on when disc inserted and when clickling mouse to open , or explore. First message usually is "Please Insert a disc...."..which I already have. Then I may get the msg "do you want to format...". SOMETIMES, if I press down slightly on the end of the disc with my finger, it will make a 'clicking' sound and actually open ! But this happens very, very rarely. I bought a new, un-used disc and get the same results.
Yes, I have checked the cable inside and even swapped with a known to be working hardware.

Now, on the same computer, here is another thing. When I plug in an external floppy drive via USB (a 2003 Dell provided TEAC product)...it acts the same way...exactly. When I try the external floppy drive on two other computers, the same bad results. But, one of several discs I have tried did open immediately on a friends internal drive. So, it is not bad discs.

ANY ideas ? When I check for driver up-date things, I seem to have the 'latest' drivers. And yes, I did try the un-install routine.

As for the USB port and the internal floppy drive, the AVG Virus program cannot open the two (A & B) drives to check them. Another virus program also finds no virus. The Device manager says 'these devices are working'....weeeellll...hello there.....not working. Yes I have a USB stick and that works fine and a scanner via USB. I also went to 'startup' and deleted some of the starup items...no matter.

Thanks for your Ears ! Hope to hear some good news !

[Rukee]

Welcome to the forums.
I`ve also had a rash of bad floppies and CD-ROM drives. It can be very maddening. Sounds like you need a replacement for both the internal and USB units.

[skinnedduck]

Floppy Drives: My USB/external drive worked just fine on the Dell Laptop it came with. When my desktop A drive would not open discs, I tried the Dell external USB connected drive from my laptop. This would also not open a disc. THEN when I went back to my laptop, this same drive would not open the disc and has not worked since.! Is some kind of virus thing going on here ? Virus cks show nothing.

[Dave3d]

Hello skinnedduck.
Does the usb floppy drive have its own power source, or does it get its power from the usb port?

If it does not have its own power source, I would suggest getting a new usb floppy drive, that DOES have its own power source.

From my experience (about 3 ext. usb floppy drives), the only one that hasnt gone kaput is the one with its own power source.
I have 2 dead (sometimes they click, sometimes they dont) usb floppy drives, that died very suddenly and very quickly, and they both were gewtting their power from the usb 2.0 port. Bad drives.

As for the internal fdd going bad, I cant say. Maybe you have a run of bad luck with fdd's?