Floppy not recognized
 

My buddy's PC won't recognize a floppy in his drive. The read light comes on when a disk is inserted, and Windows recognizes that there's actually a drive there, but the disks aren't being seen.

He uses XP Pro, MSI mobo, 256MB DDR333, 80GB WD HDD, Sony floppy.

He's tried multiple disks, both new and old--nothing is recognized as being in the drive. When in My Computer, the drive shows up.

Any ideas?

Bad read arm inside the drive, or a bad controller on the mobo would be the first 2 places i test.

make sure the floppy cable is put in the right way and the same on the mobo.

yeah, I'd suspect a bad floppy drive.

The floppy drive is a Sony, though. :(

I'll try putting another one in there and see what happens.

should it being sony make a difference? if it no worky, it no worky... :/ check your IDE connections while you're at it!

The drive is dead dude. Throw it away.

Same symptoms on a work PC last week. Dead drive.

$20 later, you'll be happy.

Here is a possible solution, If your friend has one of those molded floppy drive openings in the case, the cover might be pusing in on the floppy eject button just enough that the disk can't be read. I actually had that problem with my case, and just saw this the other day that reminded me of this too. http://www.dansdata.com/danletters045b.htm

I had the same problem when I built my current PC, had a floppy drive that the mobo couldn't detect.

Swapped it with the drive from another PC however, and they both work fine now.

As strange as it might sound, check that the power cable has not come loose. Because IDE cables carry a scant 1.5v, there is enough power to the drive without the power cable for a machine to still detect it. If the computer has been physicaly moved before the problem, this represents a good possibility.

Brand of drive doesn't guarentee it will last forever. Check your cables, drive and mobo.