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Computer Repair Problems and Solutions

This is the presentation, history and documentation of various problems and solutions encountered during technical practices for the express purpose of creating a reference manual for future repairs.

Although I have encountered many previous problems and solutions during my many years of tech experiences I am only documenting this manual starting from my experience in the year 2007. It is my hope that this information may perhaps assist other striving technicians.

I started this manual seeking to publish it one day and for your input I decided to share this small portion of the manuscript with you here on this forum

1. Floppy disk won't write to disk!

Problem One: began when a friend of mine contacted me saying that he had a problem with his computer floppy disk drive, and that he could not write to the disk. He informed me of his experience with the problem the problem solutions as he saw it and the possible solutions to the problem (he had assumed the floppy was damaged). However he was not sure, so I proceeded to investigate the problem further by testing and reenacting the problem on his computer. By placing the suspected disk in the drive I noticed that the drive was able to read the disk, but when I tried to write to the disk an error menu would appear stating that "The disk was write protected or unformatted and was unable to perform this function". I further tested the disk by placing it in my notebook computer to test it and received the same results. This test was an indication that the problem was not in the computer or the software but it appeared to be with the floppy disk itself. Therefore I removed the write protection from the disk by moving the small switch from the whole on the top corner of the floppy disk and retested the disk in the drive, yet getting the same results again, "unable to write to disk" (This should have been my first action). Well it appeared that something was wrong with the disk at first glance but I wasn't convinced so I proceeded with further test and observations. As I continued with my investigation and testing efforts, here is the solution I had come across.

Solution One:
As I looked into all aspects of the floppy subsystem I began to suspect the BIOS (Basic input and Output System) as being the culprit behind the problem so I turned all my attention to that realm. Upon entering the BIOS I immediately found the problem, the floppy disk drive had been write protected from within the BIOS

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