Windows XP Crash (Wants to reboot from floppy)

My Dell 4100 computer is crashing intermittently and trying to boot from drive A (Floppy drive). This all started after having the computer turned off for one week. I get the following message:

Invalid Boot Diskette
Insert Boot Diskette in A:

I have gone into the BIOS and changed the boot order several times. I normally have it set to boot first from IDE HDD, and second the CD Rom. I have even disabled the floppy drive in the BIOS but somehow it turns itself back on. Sometimes the BIOS will show the Primary IDE Master as Maxtor, and the Primary IDE Slave as Seagate which should be correct, and other times it says “Not Installed” for both of them. Sometimes the computer will boot fine after tinkering with the BIOS and then suddenly the computer will just turn off and say Invalid Boot Diskette. There is no disk in the floppy drive. Now after unplugging the floppy drive in the CPU and hitting restore defaults in the BIOS it is booting from the hard drive correctly. I don’t believe the computer has a virus. I still do not know why it just suddenly turn off, or wants to boot from the floppy after restarting.

The computer is a Dell 4100 desktop 1Ghz Pentium III
256 Ram
Windows XP Home, SP2

If anyone knows what might be going on, I would appreciate their insight…

Thanks, Shawn

 

If the computer boots normally after removing the floppy drive cable. Then do one of the following.

Replace the floppy cable, or replace the floppy drive.

 

Run yourself some tests on the Hard drive and the floppy!

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Disktest_PRO_d2368.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4966

Regards...

 

thefool,

The computer does not start normally after removing the floppy drive. I unplugged the power supply and the wide gray ribbon. Same problem.

I installed a new CMOS battery even though the voltage was 3.05 volts on the old. Any time after I reboot the computer, I must go into the BIOS and change the settings to "restore defaults" which seems to work for that boot up, but I am back at square one for the next boot up. Under the restore defaults option it turns on the floppy diskette drive (enabled) and the boot order is as follows:

1st boot device: Floppy
2nd " " : ARMD-FDD
3rd " " : IDE-HDD
4th " " : ATAPI CDROM

After it reboots, it recognizes that the floppy is missing and gives me the option to hit the delete key to ignore it. I have also noticed that my second hard drive is missing from both "My Computer" and when I go to the disk management tools from the control panel.

I believe this all has to do with the fact that the IDE disk controller for both hard drives shows up as "not installed," in the BIOS. I do remember them showing up before listing what type of brand/model number the disk was. When I check the hard drives in the device manager still only one shows up, but it shows that it is working properly.

nitecrawler,

The Hard Drive Inspector program shows everything to be OK.

Duhhhhhhhhhhh...



Shawn