I'm having a hard time booting my computer through the floppy drive. I wonder what's wrong with my PC but I can't boot on my floppy. It will say "Disk Boot failure, Insert system disk and press enter". I have tried two boot disk and all have the same problem.

What could be the reason for this?

Here are the things I have done:
1.) I tried all kind of combination on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd boot on the bios, but I still can't get it working. I even tried placing as floppy on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd boot. When I place at least one of the boot to the HDD-0, it will work since I have installed OS on my harddisk. My problem is only on how to boot through my floppy.
2.) I have tried booting through my harddisk and see the files on my floppy disk through windows explorer and I was able to see it. I also tried another floppy disk with a document file and I was able to open it. So I guess the floppy drive isn't the problem.
3.) The Boot up floppy Seek in the Bios has also been set to enabled.
4.) I checked on my 1.44 disk drive on bios and it was set to drive A.
5.) I tried 2 different bootdisk but both disk doesn't work. But this will work on another computer.


Here's my rig:
AMD Athlon 1.0 Ghz
128 MB SDRAM
RedFox motherboard
Seagate 40 GB Harddisk

In your BIOS is the option for "Floppy Seek" enabled? is the floppy set correctly (size, type, etc)?

Some machines need the floppy seek enabled, in addition to having the floppy set to be the first item in the boot order to be able to boot from the floppy.

Here's the section of the PC Guide that deals with this problem:

http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/fdd/fail.htm

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Quote:

"The floppy disk will not boot, but it is accessible after booting from the hard disk

Explanation: The system will not boot from the floppy disk. The floppy drive is usable after booting the system from the hard disk.

Diagnosis: There are occasionally hardware reasons why a drive won't boot, but usually it is a problem with the floppy disk in the drive, or more commonly a configuration issue.

Recommendation:

Check to see if the system is trying to access the drive before it tries to boot the hard disk (you should hear a brief noise from the hard disk and the activity light should come on). If it is trying to boot the drive, then make sure there is a bootable disk in it.
There may be a corrupted boot sector on the disk. Try a different disk if you have problems with one. If you are having errors repeatedly, look in this section.
If the system is not even trying to boot the floppy disk, make sure to check the BIOS setting that controls the boot sequence for the PC. It is possible that the BIOS has been told not to boot from the floppy disk, as a security measure.
Make sure you don't have the drive accidentally configured as a B: drive instead of an A: drive. See here for more on configuration.
There may be a problem with the drive or with the drive controller. Usually in this case I think the controller is more likely to be at fault. Swapping the drive with another drive that works in another PC is the best way to determine if the drive or the controller are at fault."
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Make sure the floppy drive is actually being accessed when you are trying to boot - the light should come on.

If it is possible, write the boot disk (preferably a Windows Start Up disk) using the same floppy drive.

Either the floppy disk is bad, the floppy is not being read, or the drive is bad - I don't know of any other choices.

I just tried changing the fdd to another one and this solves the problem. That made me conclude that it's the fdd that causes the problem on booting.

One more question, are there still a chance for the defective floppy drive to be repaired? It's still can read file on windows. It's just on booting that has a problem.

A new floppy drive will cost you about $10, repairing a bad one will generally start at about $50 to look at it and more to repair it if it can be fixed. You could try it in another computer to see if it works properly and if it doesn't, I would view it as a lost cause.

I see. I thought the problem with the floppy can be repaired without any cost by just tweaking on something. Anyway, I have already found what causes the problem.

Thanks for all those who replied on this thread.

Floppy drives tend to be pretty straightforward, they generally either work or not. They can be cleaned and sometimes then work better, but replacing software and other options don't seem to make a difference usually.