disk-seek-failure-feature-image

How To Fix Diskette Drive 0 Seek Failure

I was given a Dell Inspiron-530 Desktop. A Vista Home Basic, Intel Celeron CPU 450 @ 2.20 GHz, 288GB hard drive and 1GB RAM.

It was an old desktop owned by a late neighbour. When I turned it on, it would give an error message:

Diskette drive 0 seek failure
Press F1 to continue, F2 to enter SETUP

dell-vista-diskette-drive-0-seek-failure-f1-continue-f2-setup

F1 will boot into Windows and F2 goes into the BIOS setup.

A little research online and I found out the problem was more likely a floppy disk error. This computer has no floppy drive. So I went into the BIOS to try to disable it.

So I pressed F2.

On the first screen, I used the arrow keys to move to the line Standard CMOS Features and pressed Enter.

phoenix-award-bios-standard-cmos-features

On the next screen, I used the arrow keys to scroll down and highlight Drive A [1.44M, 3.5 in.] and pressed Enter.

phoenix-award-bios-setup-utility

Then a small window opened giving me the option to disable the drive. I used the arrow key to move the little square dot up from 1.44M to 3.5 in. To None, then pressed Enter.

select-1.44m, 3.5in-or-none

Then I clicked on F10. I got the message SAVE to CMOS and EXIT (Y/N). Y

Type Y for yes or N for No. The Y was already there so I just pressed Enter.

save-to-cmos-and-exit-yes-or-no

This rebooted the computer automatically and since it wasn’t looking for a floppy disk that wasn’t there I didn’t get the error message.

Is anybody still using Vista? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

2 thoughts on “How To Fix Diskette Drive 0 Seek Failure”

  1. I still use a 530 .Intel Core Duo E8600 3.33ghz , 8gb ram and a Samsung 870 ssd . It runs Windows 10 very well .

    1. Hey Fred,

      I’m not at all surprised to hear that your machine runs Windows 10 very well, the Intel E8600 was (is) a darn fine CPU. I used to have an old box running XP with the same processor.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top

WHY NOT SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER?

Get great content like this delivered to your inbox!

It's free, convenient, and delivered right to your inbox! We do not spam and we will not share your address. Period!