Our county office donated a large quantity of Dell Optiplex GX100 PCs to our school. I have done a clean install of Windows 98 but I can't read anything on the "A" drive and I can't write to it either. What am I missing? By the way, teachers are anxious to use the "fee" PCs but unhappy that they can't back up their files.:confused:

go into the BIOS an make sure all the floppy is enabled...(if this is for all the machines then check each one...)

Also you may need to check each one by openning them up and checking the pysical connecetions.

Check to see if the drive is recognized in BIOS. If not, then make sure their cables are properly and securely connected.
If that's ok, then connect the drive's power(Molex) cable to a different power connector.
If that does not work, then replace the data(ribbon) cable.
If still no luck, try a new drive.

If it's recognized in BIOS and the drive's light stays lit continuously, then reverse the position of the data cable where it connects to the drive.

If it's recognized in BIOS but not in Windows, then start in Safe mode, go to Control Panel/System/Device Manager, remove all floppy drives from the list, and restart in normal mode.
If no luck, try a new drive.

Sandyston, you say that the A drive is not recognised after installation of win98. Was it recognised BEFORE? If these machines were used on a network, it is quite possible that the floppy drives were disabled as a security measure to prevent the installation of unofficial programs etc. Check in the BIOS first. If not there, the wiring may have been disconnected!

David