A:/ is not accessable The device is not ready.

[4TS&W]

That's all I get when I try to use my A drive (3.5 inch floppy drive). In the control panel, under hardware, it says that there are no problems with the device.

I'm using windows 98. The driver is called "Generic NEC floppy disk".

Grrrr! :(

[David_G17]

Originally posted by 4TS&W
In the control panel, under hardware, it says that there are no problems with the device.

never trust windows to diagnose hardware.

have you tried floppies known to work (i.e. tried successfully in one computer, but fail in this one)?

[aspartz]

IIRC, windows only looks at the BIOS to see if the drive is avail/ok until you actually try to use it. Could the cables be loose or inverted?

ARS

[4TS&W]

No floppies will work... even verified good ones. I'm checking the cables.. they might have come loose in the move. I figured it was a bad driver or something.

[4TS&W]

Thanks guys, for trying to help me out...

after checking all of the connections, looking for drivers, reading tons of help forums, and anything else I could think of...

My stepdaughters boyfriend held the disk down with his finger while I clicked on the drive, and it worked fine.

All it is, is that the drive is so old, that whatever holds the disk in the down position to be read is too weak to do it's job.

I guess I'll either have to just hold it down everytime it reads, or replace the damn thing....

^2 for spending all that time on the stupid A:/drive. Who uses floppys anymore anyways????

(answer: kids trying to do homework to take to school, which is why I needed the drive in the first place...)

[Eric1963]

You need another floppy drive. If you ever run across an old 486/PII/PIII which no one wants, you can pull the floppy drive and put it in your machine. It's simple to do.

[pyblood]

PM sent.

[IndyGunFreak]

Originally posted by Eric1963
You need another floppy drive. If you ever run across an old 486/PII/PIII which no one wants, you can pull the floppy drive and put it in your machine. It's simple to do.

Thats what I was thinking. You're(the original poster) over reacting a little bit to just a bad floppy, this is a super simple fix. Yeah they are obsolete, most don't use them anymore, etc, but if you need it, you need it. You can probably get a floppy drive at your local computer chop shop for 10-12 bucks. Retail at Best Buy, it'd probably run you around 25.

IGF