capper5016 wrote:A couple of things tyou might want to do before you write off the board.
1. Pull the floppy cable, make sure there are no bent pins on the board or the actual FDD, sometimes people put the cables on wrong and bend a pin, another issue is that sometimes the included FDD cable has no slot to line up the correct side, I've been guilty of that and it can do what you are describing.
2. Reset the board, pull the battery, clear the CMOS, unplug everything, then reboot and see if by chance that somehow the IRQ was screwed up.
Just a couple of trouble shooting ideas, youd be surprised sometimes that it is a rather simple problem that gets overlooked.
I have flashed the BOIS from the live MSI website.
No the cable is not backwards,there are no bent pins,I have tried other plugs from the power supply.
I have tried everything you suggested.
I have tried three installs from XP, Win98, and ME.
I have not removed the battery to reset the CMOS. I just flashed the BIOS.
The BIOS is set to boot from the floppy after the CD-Rom.
The OS does not see the floppy at boot up.
The floppy is turned on in the BIOS.
If it were not turned on, would it lock up the computer?
I have never seen the floppy lock up a computer.
If it were defective,it just would not work. The problem is NOT with the with the floppy disk drive or the cable.
I have checked the power supply. Amps and volts are good.
I will try one more install with XP Pro. before I return the mobo.
But I truely feel the mobo is defective. Everything points to that case.
If it walks like a duck and looks like duck it is probably a duck.
I have spent many many hours trying to fix this floppy drive problem.
As you suggest, I will try one more install.
Now you have me wondering again.
I will keep you all posted.
Thanks a ton for the help.
James