Windows 3.11 won't load after installing 5.25" floppy drive

[trmg]

I installed a 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drive in my 486 and now Windows 3.11 won't load. I'm not even sure where to begin to troubleshoot this!

I have the BIOS set correctly with the A drive being the 1.44MB 3.5" drive and the B drive as a 1.2MB 5.25" drive. The systems seems completely happy in DOS.

When I load Windows, I see the Windows splash screen for a few seconds then it bombs back to the command prompt. No error message is displayed.

If I disconnect the 5.25" drive, Windows loads and works without issue.

Any ideas??

 

[trmg]

I did some more testing and here's what I found.

I removed the 3.5" drive and connected the 5.25" drive as drive A. Windows loads fine.

I re-installed the 3.5" drive as drive B and left the 5.25" drive as drive A. Windows loads fine.

I switched everything back to when I was having trouble...the 3.5" drive as A and the 5.25" drive as B. Guess what. Windows loaded fine!

What the heck? So weird...

 

[GravityCrab]

Gatta love that even in the good old days of DOS windows had unbelievably weird issues!

 

[TravisHuckins]

I did not have any issues installing my 5.25 drive, it showed up in windows right away.

 

[trmg]

I did not have any issues installing my 5.25 drive, it showed up in windows right away.

The issue had nothing to do with the drive showing up in Windows. It had to do with Windows crashing all-together when the drive was connected. Wouldn't even load. It was very weird. I would love to know what was going on...but the issue seemed to just go away after I posted here. :D

 

[stefano]

Win3 still depends on the bios for most of the file operations. I can't think at good reasons for it to crash, even if extra dos resident drivers are used. I wouldn't exclude some odd hardware problem too.