making flippy floppy
January 4, 2008 6:56 AM Subscribe
My Computer detects a floppy drive when there isnt one installed .........
Hi i'm running windows xp home - i have one sata drive and one scsi drive ( i think its called that - the older version of hard drive) i also have a cd/dvd.
what happens is :
the computer detects both hard drives ok but it detects the cd/dvd player without giving you access it says "please insert a cd" without letting you in, if theres something in there , it deosnt see it - it also detects a floppy disk drive, when lo and behold theres no physical floppy disk drive there at all.
I'm looking to get rid of the floppy and get the cd/dvd working - i've tried removing it in device manager and also booting without the sata hard drive.
Hi i'm running windows xp home - i have one sata drive and one scsi drive ( i think its called that - the older version of hard drive) i also have a cd/dvd.
what happens is :
the computer detects both hard drives ok but it detects the cd/dvd player without giving you access it says "please insert a cd" without letting you in, if theres something in there , it deosnt see it - it also detects a floppy disk drive, when lo and behold theres no physical floppy disk drive there at all.
I'm looking to get rid of the floppy and get the cd/dvd working - i've tried removing it in device manager and also booting without the sata hard drive.
Did you plug your CD drive into the floppy slot on your motherboard? This is doable if you apply enough force to bend a pin.
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:59 AM on January 4, 2008
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:59 AM on January 4, 2008
Best answer: Heh. You kids probably can't imagine it, but the computer has no way to detect whether a floppy drive is installed. It's such ancient technology that you need to explicitly enable/disable in your computer's BIOS setup.
[Cue lame stories about the fun times spent trying to get some piece of hardware working back in the times of pre-PnP ISA]
posted by themel at 8:09 AM on January 4, 2008
[Cue lame stories about the fun times spent trying to get some piece of hardware working back in the times of pre-PnP ISA]
posted by themel at 8:09 AM on January 4, 2008
Disable the floppy controller in BIOS, as themel and 0xFCAF.
You cannot plug an IDE cable for a CD/DVD into a floppy header because the floppy header has about 1/4 fewer pins. I'm thinking this problem is unrelated to the floppy issue, so feel free to update here once the floppy thing is taken care of.
posted by rhizome at 8:15 AM on January 4, 2008
You cannot plug an IDE cable for a CD/DVD into a floppy header because the floppy header has about 1/4 fewer pins. I'm thinking this problem is unrelated to the floppy issue, so feel free to update here once the floppy thing is taken care of.
posted by rhizome at 8:15 AM on January 4, 2008
Response by poster: sure, i've got rid of the floppy thing in the bios - it now detects the two hard drives but now instead of one cd drive it detects two.
posted by sgt.serenity at 9:02 AM on January 4, 2008
posted by sgt.serenity at 9:02 AM on January 4, 2008
Response by poster: and if i unplug everything except the old drive it still detects a cd drive .
posted by sgt.serenity at 9:33 AM on January 4, 2008
posted by sgt.serenity at 9:33 AM on January 4, 2008
Best answer: Software CD emulation like Daemontools or something that comes with your CD burning software, like Nero ImageDrive?
posted by themel at 9:50 AM on January 4, 2008
posted by themel at 9:50 AM on January 4, 2008
Response by poster: problem solved - it was the cd burning program that created the ghost drive - i deleted the program and the drive went away.
posted by sgt.serenity at 10:36 AM on January 4, 2008
posted by sgt.serenity at 10:36 AM on January 4, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by 0xFCAF at 7:22 AM on January 4, 2008