Re: Floppy stopped working: Could this mean a boot sector virus?

i agree 100%.
i wouldnt hesitate to put winxp on any coputer.
all my old computers running win98 all got winxp and it is great!
add a little more memory if nec and its beautiful.
i dread even thinking about installing any other operating system.

Christopher Muto wrote:
xp installs fine on a inspiron 3500 (see above) with all drivers built in... could not be easier. in fact it is easier than doing win2k (assuming you have enough disk space and memory, again see above).
installing win98 on a machine that previously had win2k will not work unless your first reformat the disk as fat 16 or 32 and do a fdisk /mbr.

"Jay B" <jayb@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:zh11f.7513$dl2.5622@xxxxxxxxxxx

i think you asked how to reinstall win98 and you must do a clean boot and boot off the floppy and then it will run the install cd. if your floppy is not working or you cant figure out how to get it to work, then you cannot reinstall win98. end of story. we can help you troubleshoot why it doesnt work...

i believe that win ME was the first OS to boot directly off a CD.
you can certainly put win2000 on there or winxp as well. the worse will be that it runs slow. win2000 will run a lot faster than winxp on that machine anyway. and you gotta get past the driver hassles.



news.rcn.com wrote:


I have taken all the advice I have been given and acted on all of it. I don't see what you mean by not taking advice or by your suggestions as to attitude?

Now that I discover that the floppy wont work at the end of the cable which is provided for it to be connected to the parallel port, I am trying to move on from that point to discover both how to install the OS onto what I would like to be a blank hard drive and why the floppy drive wont work in the bay. Did you miss this shift?

I even asked how to install the OS from the D partition with a full install disc and no one has responded as yet. What do you mean by taking more care in my responses? Should I start going back and re-posting questioning whether the floppy can be used in this computer with the cable? As far as I can see, beyond telling me that the floppy wont work (with an option on 'it may be dirty'), no one has told me what is or might be wrong? Admittedly some responders did think that my question as to installing an OS was instead meant to ask how to use a Thinkpad HDD in an Inspiron and some gave really helpful advice but thought that I could use the floppy in some way (which I can't) which leads me nowhere really. I am now therefore still looking to ascertain how I can either do a fresh install from the install discs or start in Windows and wipe the windows installation on C: while installing from D: (which looks unlikely). I did try to start the setup.exe on the D drive from a DOS prompt but it wouldnt let me do this.

I have re-read my op and cant see what is causing all the confusion beyond my not having said which computer I was using in asking a generic question about installation of an OS on a HDD which I didnt mind wiping.

My only other option at the moment is to put a Dell recovery CD in the drive (which will boot) and see if it will run a Windows 2000 install. But I will then have the wrong OS and possibly one which can't run on 64 Meg of memory so I am a bit reluctant to try this? Should I be doing this in order to do a downgrade thereafter to 98SE?

Please excuse all this desperate flailing around for a solution but at the moment all I SEEM to have is people telling me to do something which involves using the floppy drive or telling me that what it says in the manual about using the floppy at the end of the cable with the CD in the bay is wrong. (I don't want to tell anyone who is only trying to help me that they are wrong)


"Christopher Muto" <muto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:_3L0f.1849$_a6.1534@xxxxxxxxxxx


people have been nothing but kind to you in trying to provide advice to your horribly written question(s). i think you should both take more care in crafting your messages as well as to take care in showing some appreciation for all those that took the time to reply to you. i am glad that it only took repeating it once for you to get what was meant by the statement that the floppy only works in the internal bay. perhaps you should consider first reading the user manual that came with the system or downloading the manual from support.dell.com so you can read it and answer your own questions.

"news.rcn.com" <news.rnc.com> wrote in message news:6vidnS64_LpayN7eRVn-qA@xxxxxxxxxx


Oh I see, the floppy only works in the bay? I thought that the cable which connects it to the parallel port had something to do with it? Obviously not.

I suspect that with all this talk of misusing abstraction layers, everyone has lost sight of what I am trying to do here, which is to format the hard drive or wipe the C drive and install 98SE from the original install discs

If I can't install 98SE because I cant connect a floppy to the unit with the CD in the bay then how DO I do it?

Anyway for a fleeting moment, I did manage to get the CD to work by closing to DOS and letting it load a driver and read the CD. So I copied the whole 98SE install disc (NOT an upgrade disc) to the D drive.

Is there any way of getting into windows and going to the D drive and using the 98SE install disc to install 98 to the C drive IN PLACE OF 95usb?

"Christopher Muto" <muto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:i1D0f.19$OL5.5@xxxxxxxxxxx


the inspiron 3500 runs windows xp just fine and all drivers for it are built into windows xp (so no additional ones to download/install). however you need a 10gb hard disk for an xp installation with office 2000 and you need at least 128mb of ram for xp.

your problems stem from taking the disk from the thinkpad with windows installed on it and expecting it to work on the inspiron as it. windows nt/2k/xp can not be transplanted between different systems like that. there is a layer of software called the hardware abstraction layer that is tailored to the specific machine when windows is installed and it now has no idea how to talk to your various components. if it is an oem install of windows then you should be able to find a copy of the original windows 2k disk in a folder on the hard drive. from there you should be able to start a new installation of windows. if you are careful you can install it without formating your hard drive. other than that you could use the makedisk utility to create a set of 4 bootable diskettes from your win2k cd (in another machine) and then boot from your floppy (that only works when in the internal bay in the i3500). be sure to enter the system bios and modify the default boot sequence to move the floppy to the front of the list and the cd drive second. good luck.

"news.rcn.com" <news.rnc.com> wrote in message news:hbednSdC8YxadN_eRVn-jQ@xxxxxxxxxx


This is an Inspiron 3500 running at 366 MHz with 64 Meg ram which is about the minimum for 98SE: I don't think it will run XP but have an install disc so could give it a try if I could get a CD working.

The problem I have is that the system won't recognise the floppy at all or now the CD, neither in the bay or at the end of the cable (supplied so that you can use the floppy with the CD in the bay). It lights the LED on the front, sometimes buzzes as if it were trying to read, clicks slowly a few times as if it were trying to read and then gives up. Pressing A: in windows explorer does much the same and you get a message telling you that the floppy isn't formatted and do you want to format it.

The only other oddity is that all the drives show to be working in DOS compatibility mode??? Could this mean that there is some boot sector virus somewhere which is preventing the system seeing the floppy? And if so, how do I remove it without a floppy or a cd? I seem to remember a virus years ago which exhibited these tendencies called NYB although it wasn't a hard drive boot sector virus was it? You got rid of it by using FDISK /MBR as I remember it but I cant see doing this

from within windows and any boot-up puts you in windows

Otherwise I was wondering whether there was a way of reinstalling the BIOS over the present possibly corrupted BIOS installation? The present BIOS is 4.00 revision 6.00 with Version 10 showing and a version 14 on a floppy I thought I had installed. I suppose it may not have installed if there is a boot sector virus?

This may well be just poor hardware components but I am somewhat comforted by the fact that the CD went out only a short while after the floppy stopped working so it MAY well just be the BIOS which has become corrupted or a boot sector virus: I am also slightly comforted by the appearance of a Win 95 USB updater in ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS so there is a possibility I may be able to get an USB CD reader working so long as it doesn't need drivers to work


"Christopher Muto" <muto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:o_e0f.10475$794.4103@xxxxxxxxxxx


would help if you mentioned the model... 

ORIGINAL POSTING:

I am suffering what appears to be a Dell issue (I have only had it on Dell
computers, - and too often on various different Dells), which is that
suddenly this computer wont recognise its floppy drive. It spins and spins
and however many times I try to check the BIOS and boot off it, the computer
wont boot off the floppy. So I cant get it to see whatever CD I put in the
drive.

The unit wont see its floppy whether I put it into the bay or at the end of
the cable. I don't think it is a BIOS revision issue OR is there some way of
reinstalling the same BIOS as is in the unit already? Can an attempted
install of an OS screw up the BIOS? I haven't unplugged the Unit since all
this arose so I can't see this as a BIOS battery issue

The full problem is that I have changed the hard drive and put one off a
ThinkPad in with Win 95 on it. It works. I tried to install 98SE off the
original install discs but, booting off the CD, the unit won't do a clean
install. I discovered that it also obviously won't install with the 95
win.com in place. Then suddenly after this failed install, the OS stopped
seeing the floppy (and, later, the CD as well)! Now I don't dare format
the hard drive and try to install 98 SE from the CD for fear that the unit
won't see its CD when I try this. I kinda presume that the not seeing the CD
is not a hardware fault but is something to do with the OS although it wont
see its CD on boot either. It booted off the CD when it was doing this
install but wont boot off it any more now after restarting the unit.

Anyone know what causes this Dell floppy issue or is it simply a poor
quality hardware issue?






.

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