floppy hassle...

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i've googled this question folks but i'm getting lost in a sea of BIOS error codes!

anyway, at work (army work not volunteer) my bosses pc died a death last night, burned out psu.

instead of just being given a another good set-up to which he could easily install his old hdd to carry right on, he was given one from the back of the cupboard, so to speak, i.e, crap and just about usable.

after some mucking around he gave me a shout and i eventually got the thing running but sans drivers for the time being.

after that he decides to open it up again to stick in a cd drive which i said i would do later on, then, 2 hours later, he calls again, the boot process barely gets past memory check before giving "floppy drive error 40h"

this is one option i found via google "Floppy disk drive motor time-out 40h" so could someone explain what this means and any possible remedy for it?

btw, it's runnin '98 with prehistoric eqpt. and i checked all cables,pins etc but.... oh and i can't even change things in bios as there is a password which nobody knows!

 

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Is the floppy light permantly lit at all ? If so, this means the cable is in backwards. Even if not, try removing the floppy altogether and rebooting. Eliminate it from teh equation and see where that takes you. For a tenner a pop, it's disposable !

HTH

 

Moom, why didn't you just replace the PSU? That would have been easier than setting up a different PC especially as the replacement is troublesome.

 

ah , the two psu's are totally different, as in one is massive, plus there is a very strange looking box in the "new" case, looks like a double drive bay with a very small fan at the back of it but it's installed facing the rear casing with the fan inside?

and tbh, i didn't have time to look and see if it was physically possible to swap psu's or even check the power ratings of either!

hopefully i should crack it tomorrow, anything for brownie points!

 

I agree with Gav. When your boss decided to install the CD drive, he must have screwed up the cabling. Chances are that the BIOS is looking at the A drive for the MBR before moving on but because the floppy cable is (probably) on backwards, it can't read the device and the boot process goes toes up.

I also agree with Pete that the standard solution to the original problem would be to buy and install a new PSU. It pays to keep a small supply of spares on hand.

 

not an option here trip tbh, a lot of squaddies have to buy their own laptops for work as the army is really tight for money.

thanks for the ideas guys, i'll get in early and have a look.

 

Moomin, about the password, if you can have a look around where the battery is on the motherboard. There should be a 3 pin jumper labeled 'pwd reset' or something similar. If you take the jumper off the current 2 pins and place it on the other 2 pins (usually 1 on the outer and the middle pin) for about 5 seconds it "should" clear the bios settings back to factory set ones.

 

Just being pedantic as usual but I don't think the MBR ever resides on a floppy. I believe the boot sector of a floppy is called the boot sector not MBR.

 

My bad.

30 lashes with a wet noodle for me.

 

i actually thought of taking the cmos out for a while today, never knew there were password reset jumpers! sweet!