BleepingComputer.com: Why F1 to start

I replaced my Dell E521 hard drive with a 500 gb WD Cavier black using Apricorn cloning program. Since then the start up holds up and makes me press F1 to proceed. This does work but it is annoying. The screen says "diskette drive 0 seek failure" "press F1 to continue, F2 to enter setup". I had updated the bios to 1.1.11 from 1.1.4 . I wasn't sure if this caused the problem so I went back to 1.1.4. Any sugestions? Chevelle67

The system is looking for a floppy disc. Do you have a floppy drive? If not, go into bios and disable the floppy drive. Also check the boot order in bios and make sure the floppy is not at the top of the list.

I went into the Bios. I tried F12. No help. Went into F2,setup, boot sequence, had 8 choices but 5 were "not present". Floppy was first in sequence but was "not present" and I do not have one. I still used the space bar and un-numbered it to take it out of the sequence. This made no difference. I then un-numbered all others except left #1 bootable harddrive, and #2 onboard CD-Rom Drive. It starts ok but the original problem is still present. The start holds up and states "diskette drive 0 seek failure". I did go back into the bios to make sure the changes stuck. They did. Any other suggestions? Oh yeh, I can not figure out how to change my Bleeping Computer password. Chevelle67

Sounds like you haven't yet specifically disabled the floppy drive, so the BIOS is still trying to test it - if the device is enabled it will do this regardless of the boot order settings. In the hardware settings, rather than the boot options, there should be a setting for the FDD device to tell the BIOS it is not fitted. Different BIOS implement and name the options slightly differently - basically everything relating to the non-existent floppy drive needs to be "off" so the BIOS stops looking for it.

I went in to FDD device. I have 2 selections #1 SATA-O: wdc wde 500...... and #2 Bootable Add-in cards. I'm not sure what to do to these to get my computer to ignore floppy. Chevelle67

Hello. Chevelle67

The references to SATA and WDC (Western Digital) suggest you're looking at the HDD section.

In the Drives category there should be sections Diskette Drive, Drives 0 through 3, SATA Operation & SMART Reporting.

The Diskette Drive section should offer you the options Off, USB, Internal & Read Only, of which you need the Off option set, Internal enables the drive.

chevelle67, on 18 July 2011 - 09:30 PM, said:

At the top right of your screen, click the drop-down to the right of your member name, and select My Settings. On the Settings tab, click Change Password.

Thank you Platypus. I was looking under System where FDD and boot sequence are but you were right to look under Drives. The floppy was "off" but when I looked closer it was still designated as "internal". I changed this to "off" and it is working properly. I suppose that if I update the Bios I will need to do this again. Is there a reason to update? Also thank you for telling me how to change my password, I tried very hard to find the instructions but was not able to find it. By-the-way you were the first contact on this site I had and I really appreciate you helping me get started. Thank you. This subject can end. Chevelle67

Read the fixes in the bios update. If none of them are important to you then no, there's no reason to update.

You're welcome chevelle, I'm glad it's sorted.

I agree with Allan's advice, unless a BIOS update will cure a problem with your system, there's no real need to do it.