By Stephen Bucaro

With advent of rewritable CD (CD-RW) many people are predicting demise of venerable floppy disk. Today's computers can even boot from CD drive. But if your computer is not connected to a network, there is no quicker way to back-up or share a file.

Problems with floppy drive are rare, but that is not case with floppy disks themselves. Floppy disks are made super cheap and are very unreliable. Also, floppy disks are sensitive to magnetic fields. If you place a floppy disk on top of your monitor, your computer case, or any metal object, you risk corrupting disk. If you have a problem reading a floppy disk, it is almost always a bad disk.

Use following troubleshooting guide:

- Can't read a floppy disk

If you have another system, check to see if drive in that system is able to read disk. If disk works in a different drive, begin by checking for obvious problems. It is not unknown to find an object like a Post-It note or metal slide protector from a previous disk stuck inside a drive.

- Can't write to a floppy disk

Again, begin by checking for obvious problems. Make sure floppy disk is not write protected. On a 3.5" disk you should be able to see through hole in upper-right corner of disk (looking at labeled side of disk). If there are no files already on disk, try to re-format it.

- Can't boot from a floppy drive

By Stephen Bucaro

When your computer does not boot, first thing a technician must ask is; what do you mean by "it won't boot"? Many times problem is simply that user doesn't have their monitor turned on, or that they received "Invalid system disk" message because they left a floppy in drive. Or does user mean WINDOWS won't start?

A problem can occur in boot sequence even before hard disk comes into play. When a computer first starts, its Basic Input/Out System (BIOS) performs a Power On Self Test (POST). Before computer is ready to use display, it communicates using beep codes. After display is initialized, it sends codes to screen.

If your computer stops with an error code on screen, you need to find out who made your computers BIOS and check website of BIOS manufacturer for meaning of error code.

When your computer boots, BIOS reads hard disk's partition table in order to find boot record. If partition table is damaged, message "Invalid drive or drive specification" will be displayed. The partition table does not change after drive is partitioned and formatted unless it has been damaged, possibly by a virus.