For some unknown reason my 3 1/2" floppy disk drive has suddenly undergone a gender change and now thinks its a 5 1/4" drive (ie its shows up as such in Windows Explorer - Win98). Unsurprisingly, I can't do anything with A: drive at the moment.

I have checked the BIOS and it correctly has the floppy at 1.44mb 3 1/2". I have tried deleting the floppy disk controllor in device mangager and rebooting, with W98 finding the floppy drive but reinstalling it as a 5 1/4" drive.

Any thoughts and / or suggestions would be appreciated.

If you put a 3.5" disk in will it still read it.

:)

No - I just get the standard Explorer message "A:\ is not accessible. The device is not ready." The Device Manager in System Properties reports that the floppy is working properly, but this is clearly not the case.

Cheers

Please detail specs for your system, what software changes you have made recently and what hardware changes you have made. Even if you haven't made any changes recently, I would also run a full security scan for virus, spyware, trojan and any other malware that might come along. If you don't have the programs already, you can download what you need in mjc's security thread here:

http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15179

I would also check in Device Manager to see how the drive is listed and probably I would try removing it, preferably from Safe Mode. Then reboot and see if Windoze restores it in proper form...

In
"Bios Features Setup"
you should have
"Swap Foppy Drive : Disabled"

If this setting were enabled you would be telling the BIOS to use the [5.25in] B: drive as the A: drive.

Naturally, you then have problems when the BIOS [and then the Operating System] cannot find this [5.25in] drive.