I hate CMOS. Someone help me.

Betaflame · Post by **Betaflame** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:23 am

At first.. I was having an overheating problem. A good canned air dusting helped that out.

Then I got a bad checksum error.

Now I am getting an Invaild A: drive. My CMOS is set at 3.5 (er. or is a .25? I get confused. Who uses the damn thing?) legacy 1.44 MB. The other options are a 5.25 with all sorts of various space options. I know it isnt one of those. (I'm not -dumb-.) or a 3.5 2.88 MB. I tried the 2.88 MB and it gave the same error.

What should I do?

Rembrandt Q. Einstein · Post by **Rembrandt Q. Einstein** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:43 am

almost any modern floppy drive nowadays is a 3.5 1.44 MB, other than that I don't know what to tell you.

T8y8 · Post by **T8y8** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 4:05 am

Take it out.

Who uses it anyway?

adamjaskie · Post by **adamjaskie** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 4:40 am

If you take it out, you will need to use it.

If you leave it in, you will never use it.

T8y8 · Post by **T8y8** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 5:29 am

So very true.

Imp · Post by **Imp** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 7:14 am

just disable it in your BIOS. The only times you need floppys are for school, and drivers for old hardware. But XP includes most of the drivers you will ever need (2000 has a fair amount also).

Nekra · Post by **Nekra** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 7:51 am

i use my floppy when copying small files, like saves when i need to take them elsewhere, rather then wasting a CD for something that will fit on a floppy, plus looking around the office i'm in right now, they are used for storing data here.

XenoWolf · Post by **XenoWolf** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 11:42 am

Without further details I'm lost. Possibly bumped an IDE cable loose while 'dusting'?

I'm with Imp, I'd just disable it until you need to use it. Then again I almost never use mine...

OniNeko · Post by **OniNeko** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 1:01 pm

But he needs to use it more often than would be warranted to disable it until needed. woo, I sound official

When he does enable it, can he use it?
Excuse me, sorry Betaflame, When you do enable the floppy, even though you get a bad checksum, can you finish loading your OS and use the floppy drive?

bad checksum is bad the last time I checked (some of my ROMS are doing that now

) so I suspect that you can't use the floppy drive in your OS.
Check the cables first.
Let us know if that fixes it.
What motherboard are you using?

Infin8Cyn · Post by **Infin8Cyn** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 4:00 pm

[quote="Betaflame";p="399445"]At first.. I was having an overheating problem. A good canned air dusting helped that out.

Then I got a bad checksum error.

Now I am getting an Invaild A: drive. My CMOS is set at 3.5 (er. or is a .25? I get confused. Who uses the damn thing?) legacy 1.44 MB. The other options are a 5.25 with all sorts of various space options. I know it isnt one of those. (I'm not -dumb-.) or a 3.5 2.88 MB. I tried the 2.88 MB and it gave the same error.[/quote]
I see 3 errors here:
1) Overheating (solved)
2) Bad Checksum Error (Lacking Enough Details)
3) "Invalid A: Drive" error. (Lacking Enough Details)

#1 is solved.

#2 - Not enough details are given. Was this when reading of the floppy drive? a CD? The Hard Drive? On Boot up? In Windows? etc..

#3 - [same] Not enough details are given. Was this when reading of the floppy drive? a CD? The Hard Drive? On Boot up? In Windows? etc..

However, As for the CMOS. Yes, the proper size is 3 1/2" - 1.4mb. The 5 1/4" disks are long gone from common usage and 2.88mb never caught on as a mainstream medium, between 100mb ZIP Drives and such, they were already being ousted when the idea to make them more comon was spawned. As far as I can tell, this is also not the exact wording of the error. Google knows it not.

Betaflame · Post by **Betaflame** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 5:03 pm

If I take it out/disable it, I know I will need it, urgently and immediately. I have a peice of crap sitting next to this one that my kids online school sent them, and more often than not, I have to transfer documents from one to the other. I usually use the network, but sometimes it is just as easy to put it on a disc and transfer it that way. Plus I hate not having something work like it is suppose to. Pet peeve.

Windows XP still detects the A: drive, but I just got an unable to format error. The second computer (without the error) seems to format it just fine. I dont have alot of experience with A: drive problems, but it seems like if windows is still detecting it, then shouldnt it still be hooked up?

Okay. Let me clear soemthing up. When the A: error started, the bad checksum ended. I have no idea what is up with that.

The exact error, when I boot looks like this (I wrote down my screen)

PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0
[...]
ATAPI CD-ROM [...]
Mouse initialized
(two short computer speaker beeps)
ERROR
02b2: Incorrent Drive A: Type - Run Setup

Then the standard F1 to resume, DEL for Setup stuff. I hit F1, and it finishes booting as normal.

I'm pretty sure all this happens -before- Windows is even started loading.

Edit - What motherboard are you using? No idea. I bought this one prefab. I guess this is what I get ><

OniNeko · Post by **OniNeko** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 8:43 pm

TELL ME WHAT MOTHERBOARD YOU HAVE!!!one

with this vital piece of info, I can usually find a manual online and tell you what's wrong. sometimes

Curiosity (which, since I'm a cat, is deadly): Does your CMOS/BIOS/whatever have an option for 2 floppy drives? If so, make sure you only enable the first one.
If not, there's sometimes an option for "Floppy drive seek" or "seek floppy drive" or something, disable that. I don't know if the latter will fix it, but ya never know.

What happened to the checksum error?

Betaflame · Post by **Betaflame** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 9:26 pm

"TELL ME WHAT MOTHERBOARD YOU HAVE!!!one"

Tell me how to find out and I will

Unless I buy the part myself, I generally have no idea. Device Manager is very unhelpful. I I didnt see any identifying parts on the board when I was inside. If it would be easier, feel free to ICQ me (22122731). I'm invis right now, annoying people are online.

"Curiosity (which, since I'm a cat, is deadly): Does your CMOS/BIOS/whatever have an option for 2 floppy drives? If so, make sure you only enable the first one. "

That one is easy. Nope. Just one option.

"If not, there's sometimes an option for "Floppy drive seek" or "seek floppy drive" or something, disable that. I don't know if the latter will fix it, but ya never know. "

Didnt see that one either.

"What happened to the checksum error?"

I have no idea. I think it rolled back to a "good" CMOS/BIOS setting automatically, and then caused -this- error.. which I never had before.

Lemme run a reboot and -make sure- that none of what you mentioned is there.

I feel like a tard. I built my last computer, and have fixed hundreds of problems.. but this one just shits me.

Posted Tue Sep 21, 2004 9:40 pm:

What the hell?

So now it works.

No booting error, windows sees it. I can read and write to it.

I'm so confused.

OniNeko · Post by **OniNeko** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 9:42 pm

I'm a genius.

Betaflame · Post by **Betaflame** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 9:43 pm

And telekinetic.

All I did was go look for what you told me to look for. I fixed my clock. When it rebooted after the clock change, it didnt give me the error.

Is my computer haunted?

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I hate CMOS. Someone help me.

I hate CMOS. Someone help me.

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