I built my new PC about 1 and a half weeks ago now, since then i havent had any problems whatsoever, the only thing that was wrong since day one, was that my floppy disk drive showed and shows no sign of life.

I bought a black Panasonic OEM drive from ebuyer.co.uk along with the rest of my parts, everytime i insert a floppy disk into the drive and click the drive symbol in 'my computer' windows just displays a message saying 'Please insert a floppy disk into the drive', at the same time the drives light doesnt light up at all during this process.

I wanted to know whether which is the likeliest problem that is causing this, is the floppy disk dead? faulty, or is it that it is not receiving any power, or is it a driver related problem. The only thing that i saw when building my PC was that the floppy disk IDE cable (which is a simple flat ribbon one) had about four of its wires twisted, i figured this wasnt a great problem, but is this what is causing this hassle?

Please could someone tell me a.s.a.p. as i was trying to backup my system using the Windows system backup facility and it keeps asking for a floppy disk!!

Thanks.

I have this problem every time I build a PC!! In my case, it's always the IDE cable. You need to make sure that the 'stripped' or 'twisted' end is plugged into the floppy drive and the other end, which is one complete piece, goes to the motherboard.

Additionally, the red striped side of the cable must face the power connector on the floppy drive and the red striped side of the cable generally points towards the middle of the motherboard at that end.

That's almost definitely the problem but, if not, come back to us and we'll run through some other stuff.

P.S. Let us know either way.

ok thanks, for the help.

I'll try that a.s.a.p. and get back to you if the problem persists.