floppy disk is stuck and trying to load

Hello I just joined. Am a 25 yr. computer user, but NO tech. My computer has started to show all sort of physical problems, instead of electronic. Now it ate a floppy I was trying to transfer to a CD. This is a dual drive for normal and L120 3.5 disks. It's just turning away, if I check on the control panel it says I/O error, but it won't give it back. I seem to remember in other computers there was a pinhole one could stick a paper clip in for manual release - this doesn't have one. HELP, Please!! Thank you!

 

Hi there

It's possible that the metal slider on the floppy has got jammed. When it happens to me I use a thin bladed knife to carefully slide across the face of the disk - have the PC turned off for this by the way - while pressing the release button with luck the disk will then eject.

Good luck.

 

Thank you so very much. At the moment I'm in a big project and don't want to shut down (never know if it'll start again, am looking for a new one). As soon as I do shut down I'll certainly try that. Thanks for the quick help!

 

Well you can try it with the PC powered but I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

 

I agree with Yargwel, more than likely, the metal slider has bent, and is not allowing the drive to release... If powering down, and using a thin object to remove the drive does not work, you could really take some time out of your day, and remove the drive from your system entirely and disassemble the drive. Depending on how new/old the drive is, it may have clips that will make this easy. Best of luck.

 

And in addition when you do get the recalcitrant floppy out throw it away so it won't happen again (at least with that paticulat floppy )

 

Hello again!
You probably thought 'how rude'
However, things escalated piece by piece and I had to give up and get a new one!! It's a Compac Presario Media Center Desktop w/AMD Athlon 64 Pro 3500+ XP 250 GB HD & 1 GB DDR SDRAM which was the selling point for me. I do mostly graphic stuff that kept eating up the 512MB ram and drove me nuts. All fixed up now, but of course these uptown machines don't believe in old programs on 3.5 floppies, so I ordered an external USB floppy drive - yeehaw!!

Thanks for being a buddy!

Ms. Jutta

 

Well that's is certainly a nice piece of hardware you've got there.

Just don't forget that if you have any problems you'll always get a welcome and help here.

 

Yes, I know, that's a wonderful feeling. Also since my local geek who used to work on it has left town, I decided to buy the 3 year service plan for $160.00

After I had answered you, I saw there was another post from a different Geek who adviced for me to take the whole machine apart.....sorry, I do have a brilliant brain - but my body has almost left the planet.
Am a wheelchair majorly middle aged Lady who cannot attempt physical feats of that kind. So the sour apple was bitten, but not so bad, with no interest for 1 year from BestBuy, where I've had a credit account for years!
I'm a professional Astrologer (for decades) lost a lot of walk-in clients when I had to get my spine repaired and was out of the loop for a cpl. years. Now I do it 99% by mail/email. So if anyone reading is interested........ Hope I didn't break major rules just now, but in my condition I need a bit of help

Thanks,

Ms. Jutta