Why does floppy drive light stay on and cannot read disks?

I have a clone computer, the harddrive became full . So I thought I would do an fdisk on it and reload it. I found that the fdisk would not work because it had a fat16 partion and another partion. when I tried to delete these it had a lock on them. So I went to the IBM web page and got the utility to reformat the harddrive. I did take the hard drive

out because I was just going to go buy a new one. When I went to buy one the sales person ask me what was wrong with the one I brought in to campare, he was the one who had me download the IBM utilty instead of buying a new one. I did download the utility put the harddrive back in and then started the pc back up. now I'M getting an error please insert boot disk in proper drive. and the a: drive the floppy drive and the hardrive lights stay on and I can not get it to read the boot disk. Any ideas??????

This question was answered on September 8, 2001. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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Hello and thank you for your question.

The light staying on is almost always a sure sign of a reversed cable, and also the fact that it cannot read a disk I suggest you check and reconnect your ribbon cables on your floppy and hard drives This should then take care of your problems.

Good luck!!

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Posted by Lanny of Chandler-Gilbert Community College on September 8, 2001

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