Bogus "No Floppy" Error
Hi Fred! I really enjoy your newsletter. It has been of great help to me many times over.
My problem is this. I recently had to go into bios start mode, and now I can't figure out how to get back to the normal boot sequence. I get a black screen, listing the bios version, and stating that there was a floppy search error, and giving me the option of pressing either the F1 or F2 button. This happens every time I boot and is very time consuming. I have a new Dell with windows XP, version 2002, service pack 2. I don't have a floppy drive! Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much. ---Joseph A. Dougherty
Most BIOSes have a setting to disable the floppy seek--- where the PC searches for the floppy drive(s) at every boot. The verbiage may vary, but in an Award BIOS I have here, it's listed under "Advanced BIOS Features" and is called "Floppy Drive Seek." *DIS*abling that feature tells the PC not to bother checking the floppy on start, and saves time; and will get past error messages in systems that may not have a floppy, such as yours.
Again, the verbiage may differ from brand to brand; the setting could be in places where the boot devices are listed or prioritized, or elsewhere--- just poke around in the BIOS, looking for floppy-related startup settings.
There's usually also a "fast boot" or similarly-named option that skips many routine startup self-tests; and an error-sensitivity (sometimes called "Halt On") setting that tells the PC if you want it to halt the boot and display information about every startup error that might happen, or only selected ones, such as "no keyboard" and the like.
More:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=BIOS+setup
And, as an aside: I use a digital camera to record the default BIOS settings of each new PC I get. That way, I know how things were set when I first got the machine; and can easily restore them, if I need to. This can be useful when the as-delivered setup differs from the "default" or "safe" settings built into the BIOS....
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