What does FDC Failure mean?

Question

On booting up from switch on Boot up stops with this message
FDC Failure
Press F1 to resume
This happens every time even on restart.
But not after Standby Can anyone enlighten me.

Answer 1

I agree with the comments above - but just to help explain:-

Explanation: FDC/FDD Failure. The system has detected a failure related to the floppy disk controller. The controller is a separate I/O card that plugs into the motherboard on older systems. Newer PCs have the controller built into the motherboard.

The reason for seeing it at Starup: A PC System goes through what is known as a System Boot Sequence upon powering up the system. Standby doesn't intate the this process.

Boot Process:
1. The internal power supply turns on and initializes (ensuring the power supply is reliable and smooth). But as this can take some time and having it turn on prematurely could potentially lead to damage. Therefore, the chipset will generate a reset signal to the processor (the same as if you held the reset button down for a while on your case) until it receives the Power Good signal from the power supply.

2. When the reset button is released, the processor will be ready to start executing. When the processor first starts up, it is suffering from amnesia; there is nothing at all in the memory to execute. Of course processor makers know this will happen, so they pre-program the processor to always look at the same place in the system BIOS ROM for the start of the BIOS boot program. This is normally location FFFF0h, right at the end of the system memory. They put it there so that the size of the ROM can be changed without creating compatibility problems. Since there are only 16 bytes left from there to the end of conventional memory, this location just contains a "jump" instruction telling the processor where to go to find the real BIOS (Basic Input Output System) startup program. BIOS is an essential set of routines in a PC, which is stored on a chip called CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) and provides an interface between the operating system and the hardware. The BIOS supports all peripheral technologies and internal services such as the realtime clock (time and date).

3. The BIOS looks for the video card. In particular, it looks for the video card's built in BIOS program and runs it. This BIOS is normally found at location C000h in memory. The system BIOS executes the video card BIOS, which initializes the video card. Most modern cards will display information on the screen about the video card. (This is why on a modern PC you usually see something on the screen about the video card before you see the messages from the system BIOS itself).

4. The BIOS then looks for other devices' ROMs to see if any of them have BIOSes. Normally, the IDE/ATA hard disk BIOS will be found at C8000h and executed. If any other device BIOSes are found, they are executed as well.

5. The BIOS displays its startup screen.

6. The BIOS does more tests on the system, including the memory count-up test which you see on the screen. The BIOS will generally display a text error message on the screen if it encounters an error at this point.

7. The BIOS performs a "system inventory" of sorts, doing more tests to determine what sort of hardware is in the system. Modern BIOSes have many automatic settings and will determine memory timing (for example) based on what kind of memory it finds. Many BIOSes can also dynamically set hard drive parameters and access modes, and will determine these at roughly this time. Some will display a message on the screen for each drive they detect and configure this way. The BIOS will also now search for and label logical devices (COM and LPT ports).

8. If the BIOS supports the Plug and Play standard, it will detect and configure Plug and Play devices at this time and display a message on the screen for each one it finds. The BIOS will display a summary screen about your system's configuration. Checking this page of data can be helpful in diagnosing setup problems, although it can be hard to see because sometimes it flashes on the screen very quickly before scrolling off the top.

9. The BIOS begins the search for a drive to boot from. Most modern BIOSes contain a setting that controls if the system should first try to boot from the floppy disk (A:) or first try the hard disk (C:). Some BIOSes will let you boot from your CD-ROM drive or other devices, depending on the boot sequence BIOS setting.

10. Having identified its target boot drive, the BIOS looks for boot information to start the operating system boot process. If it is searching a hard disk, it looks for a master boot record at cylinder 0, head 0, sector 1 (the first sector on the disk); if it is searching a floppy disk, it looks at the same address on the floppy disk for a volume boot sector.

11. If it finds what it is looking for, the BIOS starts the process of booting the operating system, using the information in the boot sector. At this point, the code in the boot sector takes over from the BIOS. If the first device that the system tries (floppy, hard disk, etc.) is not found, the BIOS will then try the next device in the boot sequence, and continue until it finds a bootable device.

12. If no boot device at all can be found, the system will normally display an error message and then freeze up the system. What the error message is depends entirely on the BIOS, and can be anything from the rather clear "No boot device available" to the very cryptic "NO ROM BASIC - SYSTEM HALTED". This will also happen if you have a bootable hard disk partition but forget to set it active.

Diagnosis: This is usually a problem related to the floppy disk controller, but could also be the floppy disk(s) itself. It can be caused by telling the BIOS that there are FDDs in the system when there are not. Or the ribbon cable connecting the FDD to the MB controller is connected incorrectly.

Solutions: Depends if the PC has a FDD or not (newer PC's are being sold without a FDD) supplier's think there is no need for FDD's anymore - how wrong they are. Anyway:
1. If NO FDD fitted and FDD Entry in BIOS - then remove the FDD entry in BIOS. BIOS is trying to detect 1 when physically there isn't 1.

2. IF NO FDD fitted and No FDD entry - Big failure with the On board controller or a corupted BIOS. Try a Flash of the BIOS **BE CAREFUL and BACKUP** as this could potentaily stop the PC from working toally if all goes wrong) - If after Flash update still doen't fix the problem then its a OH NO motherboard change.

3. If FDD fitted - examine the FDD cable - it may have been incorrectly fitted. (simply disconnect 1 end, carefully turn 180 degrees and refit).

4. If step 3 doesn't fix the problem - it points to either the FDD itself, the MB or a corupted BIOS. Try a BIOS flash as in step 2 **BE CAREFUL**.

5. If step 4 doesn't fix the problem - If you can borrow a mates a FDD to confirm or unless you have BIOS/Hardware diagnostic tools, you'll need to replace FDD if you still need 1 or the motherboard. Then this comes down to cost, but as FDD's are cheaper it might be wise to shell £10 beforing finding out it's the MB at fault, instead of shelling out £50+ beforing finding out it's NOT the MB but the FDD at fault, thats not to mention WinXp problems - see below.

Another point to remember if changing a Motherboard and running WinXp you may have to re-activate Windows. this is because every time your system boots, Windows checks to see if it is still installed on the same hardware. If the hardware doesn’t match you will be unable to do much more than backup your files.

The system checks these ten categories of hardware:
Display Adapter
SCSI Adapter
IDE Adapter (effectively the motherboard)
Network Adapter (NIC) and its MAC Address
RAM Amount Range (i.e., 0-64mb, 64-128mb, etc.)
Processor Type
Processor Serial Number
Hard Drive Device
Hard Drive Volume Serial Number (VSN)
CD-ROM / CD-RW / DVD-ROM
Windows XP then creates and records a number based on the first device of each type that was found during the setup and stores this number on your harddrive. When setting up, this gets sent to Microsoft with the product ID.

The way WPA works is it asks for ‘votes’ from each of the ten categories listed above. It ‘polls’ the hardware to see if its still there or was ever there and if 7 “yes, I am here and unchanged” votes come in everything will function normally.
If you change any hardware in any category then you will lose that “yes vote” but will not lose any more votes thereafter if you keep changing that same type of hardware. For example you can replace the video card as much as you like because once its been changed once the vote is already lost. Some hardware such as soundcards dont count as a vote at all, however other cards such as your NIC card counts for 3 votes so if you keep your NIC, CPU, Motherboard and ram the same you can change anything else as much as you like.

The only option left is to call Microsoft tell them that your system broke down, had to be rebuilt and thus have to get a new release code off them.

Hope this has gone some way to helping you to understand what the that Thick grey box is doing!!!

DM

MCP MCSA MCSE+ BIT

Answer 2

Fdd Controller Failure

Answer 3

This means Floppy Disk Controller failure, a number of reasons, ie not connected properly, bad drivers conflicts with other hardware etc check all the connections and have a look in the control panel for conflicting hardware, i cant say why it doesnt do it from standby, but hey this is technology!!

Answer 4

That is telling you that the computer can not initialize the Floppy Disk Controller. Does not do that when you come out of standby, because it does not try to initialize the floppy drive then.

Check that the drive is correctly installed. If it is, then you will either need to replace it if you need the drive, or go into BIOS and disable the drive so that it no longer looks for the floppy drive during bootup.

Answer 5

floppy disk controler failure:

either you have no floppy disk, and the cmos thinks there is one
( tries to turn in on at boot, but not there)
its pluged in wrong,
or its not working right,

cmos doesn't test all hardware on resume for some computers.
but does on boot.

Answer 6

Floppy Disk Controller Failure.

You probably can see that your Floppy disk drive does not work.

- Maybe you plugged the Floppy disk ribbon cable in upside down.

- Maybe your Floppy disk drive has failed.

Answer 7

floppy disk failure