FDD not recognising disk change

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This is something I’ve noticed with different versions of Windows from time to time, but never as much since I upgraded to W2K:

I insert a floppy disk into the drive, open Explorer, find the file I want, open it and edit it, then save it back to disk. Remove the disk and insert a blank, formatted disk, refresh the drive view, but the contents of the first (now ejected) disk is still displayed. So I try from within Word – same problem. I open a CMD window – same thing. Take the disk out and try it on another machine – OK, it realises the second disk is blank and therefore displays a blank ‘dir’ listing.

Any suggestions on this? I’m getting close to locking my machine in the understairs cupboard for a day or two, just to teach it a lesson.

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Don’t use floppies much, but still never been aware of it being that bad a problem.

How are you refreshing – hitting F5?

Are you using something like Word which will create a ~ temporary file? If so, are you closing the document after saving it?

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Tks for the reply Leif.

Yes, F5. I have also tried shutting down the application, then restarting it and repeating what I was trying to do before.

The thing that really gets me is that it doesn’t even recognise the change of disk from the command line of a DOS box. I’ve had occasions where going off somewhere into the C: directory structure before re-accessing the A: drive for the second time works, almost as if giving it an instruction other than ‘A:’ then ‘DIR A:’ allows it to sort itself out.

It’s almost as if the machine is being too smart for it’s own good and thinking that it knows full well the contents of the A: drive because it only accessed the disk a few instructions ago, so it doesn’t bother checking again.

Grrrrrrrrr!

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Hi Fish:

You have a hardware problem with your floppy. The “Drive Change Line” is no longer being detected. Replace the floppy and you should be fine.

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PS: Problem could also be caused by bad FD cable, but, most likely problem is the FD drive itself.

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Here is a web page that may help:

http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/fdd/fileChange-c.html

I would also suggest reseating the floppy cable at both the floppy and the motherboard ends before buying anything.

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Ian & Suitcase,

Thanks for the suggestions. It wouldn’t surprise me if the FDD has gone west – it was salvaged from an old 486 many years ago. Ho hum, another paperweight…

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