Cannot Boot from Floppy help

[froboy733]

I have an Asus p2b-ds motherboard running an Intel Pentium 2 Cpu, and I am trying to boot from either the floppy drive or the cd-rom drive so I can install my os. I have played around with the BIOS and have set it to different boot options, but it never boots from anything. I know the drives are fine because they get detected and tested in the bios. Could someone please help me? Thank you

 

[Slikkster]

I would be checking your floppy cable. It's very common to have this cable attached with the stripe facing the wrong way on the drive itself and/or the motherboard.

 

[Silx]

Is your floppy and cd bootable? Can you boot to them using a different system?

 

[UMfanatic]

yes often the cable gets plugged in wrong, I have made that mistake all the time, is your floppy drive light constantly on

 

[froboy733]

Yes they are both bootable and no the floppy drive light is never lit but it does make the seek noises when I turn the computer on. The cables seem fine I don't see any problem there.

 

[bendixG15]

Try this...

Disconnect the hard drive and the CDROM so that the floppy is the only drive.

Triple check that the BIOS setting is to boot from floppy.

Stick the diskette in the floppy drive and boot.

What happens ???

 

[froboy733]

Ok I tried that, and it goes to a different screen this time, in which it says Boot error. I tried this with only my cdrom drive as well as with only the floppy, both ways it gets to the boot screen but will not load from either of the discs I am using. I have a windows xp installation and I also created a windows xp boot disc floppy, neither work. It always says disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter.

 

[froboy733]

So after trying lots of different floppys nothing works. I have put in boot discs from nt and 95 but none of them boot. It always says their was a boot error and then tells me to insert a boot disc and hit enter. I think it has something to do with my floppy, but I don't see any problems with it.

 

[bendixG15]

Last time I had your problem, I use the memtest86 boot floppy test.

Make a good boot floppy from memtest86. (the memory tester program)
Shut off the computer, stuck in the floppy, start up the computer.
If it won't boot with the memtest floppy, then the drive is crap.

That's my way..
Good Luckkkkkk

 

[dbravo223]

Have you tried replacing your cables? Cause the same thing happen to me and the it ended up being that the cables were bad.

 

[froboy733]

I made a boot floppy from memtest and it booted up fine and ran the test. So what I'm going to try and make the boot discs over to make sure they are ok. Other than that I don't know what could be wrong. I don't think the cables could be bad since I ran Memtest but I will check that to. Thanks

 

[froboy733]

Ok, so I figured out what the problem was, it was a bad boot disc. When I boot from the floppy and it gets to the end it tells me to insert the Windows XP Pro Service Pack 1 CD, so I do. Then nothing happens, any suggestions for this problem?

 

[Slikkster]

Sounds like you have a cdrom drive issue. Try reseating the CDROM cable on both ends (drive itself and the motherboard. Make sure the CDROM's jumper is correctly configured for Master or Slave, depending upon where it is on the IDE cable.