Re: Hardware Problem

["Rev_Icon@xxxxxxxxxxx" <Rev_Icon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

By the way, this is Matt, I am sending this message with a different
email address listed.  Sorry for any confusion.

Rev_Icon@Bigfoot.com wrote:
> 
> Ok, as most of you have heard I have been having some hardware problems
> lately, first with a hard drive, and now with my floppy drive.  The hard
> drive issue seems to be a problem within the hard drive, but the floppy
> drive issue is somewhat baffling to me.
> 
> Originally, I had one 2.1g hard drive, and one 3.5" floppy drive
> installed in my computer.  The hard drive was installed on IDE1 and the
> floppy drive was connected to the floppy plug on my motherboard.
> 
> I removed the hard drive, and installed a 4.3g hard drive in it's
> place.  This drive would not work correctly.  It would error out when
> ever I tried installing Linux, Windows 95, and Windows NT.  I went to
> the Maxtor web site (Maxtor made this drive) and found a program that is
> supposed to aid in the setup of the hard drive named "MaxBlast".  I
> installed this program but it did not help matters at all.  As far as I
> can tell it didn't do anything.
> 
> I talked with Maxtor and they believe that the drive is to blame, and
> not a setup issue.  They suggested sending the drive back to them and
> they would replace it.  That sounded like a plan, so I pulled out the
> 4.3g hard drive and put my old 2.1g drive back in.  I turned the
> computer back on and the light on my floppy drive came on and stayed
> on.  I tried reading a disk from dos but I got an error saying that
> there wasn't a disk in the drive.  I put a boot disk into the drive and
> rebooted the system and the computer just started reading the disk and
> never stopped.  I could hear the Floppy drive spinning, but the computer
> booted like there wasn't a disk in the drive at all.
> 
> I went into the bios setup utility and checked my settings and
> everything was exactly the same as when I started.  From the way the
> disk drive was acting, I would have thought that the cable was on
> backwards, but upon careful examination of the cables, they were as they
> should be.  I got on the phone with Gateway 2000 technical support (my
> computer is under warranty with them) and they said that it sounded like
> the disk drive had gone bad.  They sent me a new one, and I replaced the
> old one with the new one.  I powered the system back up and the same
> thing happened again.  The new drive had no effect on the problem.  I
> called Gateway back again and they said that they thought it was still a
> bad drive issue and that they were sending me out a THIRD drive.
> Somehow I am starting to doubt that the floppy drive is at fault.
> 
> Has any one had this problem before?  Does anyone have any ideas on how
> to fix it?