Floppy Drive won't accept disk...

[Pete_2006]

Hi,

I bought a refurbished Dell Inspiron 5000 and everything on it works great except for the A-Drive. When I try to place a disk in it, it meets with resistance 1" away from complete insertion. If I push it in firmly, it won't click into place; so, it doesn't pop out the eject button and of course cannot e read by the computer.

I've checked inside with a thin plastic knife and and used a flashlight to look around. I cannot seem to see or detect anything that is stuck inside the drive. It is as if it has lost that springy nature floppy drive should have near the back.

I was wondering if it takes much work to remove the drive? Unfortunately, it is not a swappable one and I'm a real Sgt. Shultz when it comes to computer hardware...I know nothing, nothing! (Hogan's Heroes...wow, did I just give away my age or what?)

I was also wondering if a Micron floppy drive on a parallel port cord could be used to take its place? I would probably have to do something with the device manager (It has Windows XP Pro with SP 2) to detect the new drive.

The laptop has a CD/DVD R/W drive and I have a USB flash; so, I have plenty of other alternatives but I would just like to learn about what I could do myself to hook up another floppy drive or remove the old one and buy another to replace. At about 10-15 bucks, cheap, for another drive, it wouldn't be worth taking it to a repair shop.

Thanks,

Pete

[jlreich]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif forums.

The floppy can be replaced. But if you have never been inside a laptop and have basically no experience working on computers I don't recommend it. I would require removing at the least the LCD, palm rest and KB.

And Dell does not list that model in their parts department. So the only way you might find a floppy drive for it would be eBay or the like.

If you must have a floppy drive I would recommend a USB floppy drive. You may or may not be able to boot from it, but it will work fine for normal stuff.

[Pete_2006]

Thanks JL,

Of course I would have liked a reply of "Just take out two screws, slide it out, put in a replacement and you're good to go." But it is good to know what's involved, thanks for writing it out. I don't want to screw up a perfectly good laptop for a $10.00 drive, that's about what a used replacement would cost. I really don't anticipate needing the floppy, except it is nice to have one for a boot disk just in case. The guy who sold it to me thought he checked it but is willing to take it back and repair the drive or replace it. He's probably better than many who sell on eBay but I hardly think it is worth shipping a laptop back and forth. That plus having it worked on could just as easily cause more problems and for $300.00, I really can't complain.

Nice forum. I like this one and Computerhope.com.

Pete

[Paul Komski]

Dell do a pretty good guide (http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pblan/removing.htm#overview) if you did decide to bite that bullet. Hope the battery in it wasn't one of the recalled ones (http://support.dell.com/support/batteryrecall/index.aspx/i5000/en/main).

[jlreich]

I take apart Dell laptops all the time. It really isn't very hard to do. I haven't worked on this particular model, that I recall anyway, but they are all more or less the same. Latitude models are generally a little easier as they are meant for business and are a little more user friendly to work on, but Inspiron models are not bad either.

The biggest thing is to try to remember which screws go where. Make sure you keep very good track of them. If you have a handheld power screwdriver it helps a lot as well since there are so many of them. Use a good #1 Phillips bit, preferably a magnetic one as it helps to keep from losing some of the really tiny screws.

BTW Pete, most of the functions of a floppy boot disk can be had in a bootable CD these days. But if you are good at following directions and taking your time you can do it. Perhaps the guy would send you the part instead of shipping the computer back to him.

[Paul Komski]

most of the functions of a floppy boot disk can be had in a bootable CD
This is so very true - a floppy is really only mandatory for some BIOS flashing and for some F6 SATA/RAID/SCSI installs under NT OSes.

Convert floppy to CD (http://www.iol.ie/~krakowangus/bootupdiycds.htm).

[Pete_2006]

Thanks for that link Paul.

Although now I want to take the whole thing apart! LOL. I've worked a lot with wood building projects, desks, tables, etc. but never with computer hardware. It looks like fun and if I mess up, I can use my other skills and turn it into an end-table. Anyway, I saved that link and maybe I'll have the person send me a replacement drive and take a shot at replacing it myself if I ever feel I want it working again.

I will make a bootable CD today. Thanks for that and the extra info about your repair experience, JL.

What I also want to try today is to hook up that parallel Micron floppy drive I have but I cannot get XP to recognize it. I let Device Manager scan for new hardware but it doesn't detect that I hooked it up to the parallel port. Maybe I should post this question someplace else or start a new thread but do either of you know how to get such a device detected and how I would go about installing the driver? BTW - My best guess as to the driver location would be to search my Windows folder of my old 95 laptop, which is where this device came with. Possibly the device is too outdated to work, I'm not sure.

Pete

[jlreich]

I may too out dated to work in XP. But I would start by looking at the manufacturers website to see if they have the drivers for it. Who knows they may actually have an XP driver for it, or a work around to get it to work in XP.

Good luck. And if you get stuck replacing the floppy post back.

[Paul Komski]

I've never configured a parallel port floppy but I guess that if your BIOS supports it that some BIOS setting such as Parallel Port Mode needs to be set/configured for a floppy along the lines of these BIOS settings for another board (http://www.versalogic.com/kb/KB.asp?KBID=1458#LPTMode).