# 02b0 Diskette Drive A Error In Windows 98



## deganawida (Jan 5, 2005)

Greetings.

The school where I am employed recently purchased some older Gateway towers (4200 series) from a local university. They are all PIIIs, all at least 500MHz, and work well. Well, except for one PC, that is.

This one PC gives the following error at boot up: 02b0 Diskette Drive A Error. I can press <Esc> to bypass this no problem, and the PC works fine. Normally, I would think that this is a bad floppy drive, but it isn't.

You see, My Computer is registering _two_ 3 1/4 floppy drives: A:and B:.

A: does not exist. When a disk is inserted into the floppy drive, A: will not read it, and in fact trying to do anything with A: will cause My Computer to stop responding.

B: _does_ exist, and will read a floppy when inserted into the drive. It passes all tests and performs well.

I have tried using Device Manager to remove A: from the PC. It worked, showing only B: (but not changing the drive letter), but upon reboot A: had returned. Additionally, there's only one floppy drive listed in Device Manager.

I have tried using BIOS to remove A: and move B: up, but there doesn't seem to be an option for that. I can disable the DVD-ROM and CD-R/RW, but can do nothing to either floppy drives that are detected.

I would like to fix this, as teachers tend not to use computers if they do not run perfectly (and even though all it would take now to use it is hitting <Esc> when the error message pops up and remembering that B: is the proper floppy drive, that's still too much for them to bother with the PC). However, I am at a loss as to what I should do. Do any of you have a suggestion, perhaps?


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## axis77 (Aug 31, 2004)

if you can find one pc that is exactly the same, then boot to that bios and compare the settings, change whats needed, or maybe the pc has an additional floppy connecton on the mobo thats why you get the bdrive, so open the case and see exactly how its working inside, then I think you will be able to do what you need to do...in the bios there is a way to just see either the a or b


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## axis77 (Aug 31, 2004)

ok so you actually have 2 floppy drives installed, or just one.
if two then I think the adrive is bad replace it, on my first post I thought you said you only had 1 drive but it sees two


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## deganawida (Jan 5, 2005)

axis77 said:


> ok so you actually have 2 floppy drives installed, or just one.
> if two then I think the adrive is bad replace it, on my first post I thought you said you only had 1 drive but it sees two


No, there's only one. I'll open the box up and see what I see. Thanks.


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