The Steel Guitar Forum

On a 5 year old Dell going to bios I have configured the hard drive to be first, cdrom second, and disabled 3 and 4th choices. The box shows a floppy drive at the top of this configuration area but doesn't allow me to do anything like choose or disable. This computer doesn't have a floppy drive. When I boot the computer hangs looking for the floppy and gives me a black and white screen saying it can't find the floppy. Pressing F1 will bypass this hangup and the computer will start normally. I don't have the bios version with me right now but I can get that if it will help.

Is there a way to get those floppy statements out of there? Thanks............Ed

Check the various BIOS screens to see if there is any other option for the missing A drive.

Barring that, if the BIOS is searching for the drive and you can't disable it, a BIOS reset may help. First, use a digital camera to photograph each BIOS settings screen to have as a reference. Then you would reset to "default" values, reboot and see if that fixes it. If not, try Optimized values. If you manage to find a reset setting the fixes the floppy A problem, restart and enter the BIOS and change any non-floppy related settings according to the saved digital images.

Ed,

You need to disable the floppy disk controller (FDC).
Look for a section on Integrated Devices, find the FDC and set to disable.

Check the clock settings also, make sure it's correct. Being 5 years old, the CMOS battery could be getting low, causing the bios to reset to defaults.

Not sure what the defaults are on your Dell, but it could include the FDC being enabled.

What Model Dell? I do a lot of work with them. That is a typical problem if the CMOS Memory (BIOS) has been reset, it will default to the floppy drive on and then give you the message.

Tom is probably correct that the CMOS backup battery is probably bad. On most systems it is a CR2032 3V coin cell battery, available almost everywhere (Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Radio Shack, etc).