{"id":1616,"date":"2010-09-24T10:28:44","date_gmt":"2010-09-24T15:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramblindan.org\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2010-09-24T14:07:37","modified_gmt":"2010-09-24T19:07:37","slug":"win7-floppy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/?p=1616","title":{"rendered":"Win7 Floppy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A dying breed<\/p><\/div>\n

The title of this post is the search string I used last night to solve a problem with my main home computer. The search string led me to the solution… eventually.<\/p>\n

I had copied some files from a CD to several 3.5 inch floppies for my wife and her friend in Ohio. The friend in Ohio sent the disk back and said it was blank. I checked the identical disk I made for my wife and it too was blank. I thought, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on here?\u201d I know<\/em> I saw the files on the disks when I made them.<\/p>\n

Today, 3.5 inch floppies are as dead a computer accessory as the parallel printer and the serial com port. Has disk quality fallen so low that they erase themselves? I tried to reformat the disks and they would not reformat. Hmmm\u2026 bad disks.\u00a0 I pulled out some more disks and they won\u2019t format. Wow! a whole box of bad disks. I try an old boot disk I haven\u2019t used in years I know is\/was good. Poo! It has the same problem. The drive must be bad.<\/p>\n

I scan Newegg for a new floppy drive. Geeze, only one brand and it costs like $7.00 new. Floppy drives are getting VERY scarce, but cheap. Maybe\u2026 just maybe it isn\u2019t the drive. I figure it is time to let the internet tell me a few things.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I entered the title of this post into the search box.<\/p>\n

Whoa! I am not the only person with this issue. I am starting to feel better and worse at the same time. After an hour or more of digging, I learn a whole lot more about the problem. System setups exactly like mine have the problem the most. Win7 64 bit and an Asus mother board. Everything seems to work properly for months or more until they finally have a need to use the floppy drive. I am reading about myself here!<\/p>\n

One poster (person making a comment) finally gives me the info for which I have been searching. Microsoft had nothing official to say about the problem, like it doesn\u2019t exist. For them, it doesn\u2019t. The poster said he updated his Asus motherboard BIOS (Basic Input Output System) and the issue went away. Finally, a real solution!<\/p>\n

I jump over to the Asus web site and start searching for the problem there. Nope, I cannot find a hint of the issue. I search for my motherboard model number and find the driver updates and the BIOS updates. Wow, quite a few updates to the mother\u2026um, board. Lots of fixes for things they don\u2019t admit or at least describe. I download the most recent version.<\/p>\n

Here is the comedy of it all, with this now becoming a very late night. To update the system BIOS I am supposed to put the BIOS file on a (get this) DOS formatted floppy disk to read it in. Naturally this doesn\u2019t work. I try several disks and the very problem I am trying to fix prevents me from fixing the problem. Arugh!<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have a thumb drive at home last night. A stroke of genius hits me when I started to think about CD drives. They boot computers like a DOS disk, so why not see if that works? \u00a0I copy the 1 Meg BIOS update file to a new CD. That was easy.<\/p>\n

I am back in setup and yes, yes, yes! It recognizes the update file on the CD! From here on it is a textbook BIOS flash process which executes perfectly. Of course now I have to reset all the default system set up parameters I use.<\/p>\n

Oops, I picked the wrong Hard Drive for the boot drive so another trip back into set up. I get it correct this time and I am finally looking at my normal Win7 desktop. I slip a new 3.5 inch floppy into the drive and viola! The drive is now perfect! No bad disks, no bad drive, it was just a screwy Win7, 64bit quirk in the computer BIOS that no one will officially admit is there. Thank God I understand computers\u2026 and I am not a parts changer. If it isn\u2019t right in the BIOS, it isn\u2019t right anywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title of this post is the search string I used last night to solve a problem with my main home computer. The search string led me to the solution… eventually. I had copied some files from a CD to several 3.5 inch floppies for my wife and her friend in Ohio. The friend in Ohio sent the disk back and said it was blank. I checked the identical disk I made for my wife...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-1616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computersoftware","tag-computer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}