I recently bought a Dell cpi laptop from ebay, everything is working fine apart from the floppy drive which refuses to save my work.

It reads the floppy OK but when I try to save on the disc it comes up with disk is write protected. Ive made sure the tab is accross and Ive even put in a replacement FDD drive. Ive also tried to format the disk in windows and in dos MODE but it still comes up with the same message.

If anyone has any ideas i would like to here from you.

Thanks

StuartThe tab on the diskette is supposed to be left open.Geez. Post the same question only once please! lol  

[glb]Flame[/glb]Sorry, Its the first time ive used one of these forums I'm REALLY sure what i'm doing, lol.

The tab is in the correct place to save, although i have tried it both ways just in case. Is the FDD detected?Yes, the drive reads ok but will not write.

I did see a similar problem on another site, the person was told she would have to replace the motherboard.Can you not contact the previous owner and inquire on this problem?Place a blank floppie in the drive and format it.....or make a boot disk to check the fdd drive......in windows do it.....or another test would be load a floppy with data on it.....in the dos command .......use the dir......A:\>dir....what o/s is on this laptop....or SPEND a few bob and get one of these>http://www.lindy.com/us/productfolder/04/40411/index.phpHave tried all of the above but none of them work.

The only solution I have come up with is to use the floppy drive on the external cable, (it works that way) and just keep the cdrom drive in the laptop permanently as they are interchangeable.

I dont know if that sheds any light on the problem but its not a problem to use it like that anyway.

Thanks