Windows 7 Floppy drive detection in Win 7 x64 booting UEFI

[Rick Dee]

I installed Windows 7 x64 Professional on a GPT partition and am booting through UEFI. The floppy controller is detect but the floppy disk drive itself is not detected.

Does anyone know why this is?

I know I am not the only one with this situation.

 

[Saltgrass]

Are you running a motherboard with a floppy controller on board? If so, I suppose you have it enabled in the bios?

I haven't seen one of those controllers in quite a while. If it is an older system, there may not be a driver for the device. I use a USB floppy drive when I need to use a floppy, for whatever reason.

 

[Rick Dee]

The motherboard is an ASRock 990FX Extreme4 which has a floppy controller and a floppy connector on it.

Yes, I have the floppy enable in the UEFI BIOS and I can boot a MS-DOS disk from it.

If I boot Windows 7 x64 in the BIOS mode on a MBR disk, the floppy disk is detected.

If I boot Windows 7 x64 in the UEFI mode on a GPT disk, the floppy disk is not detected but the floppy controller is.

UEFI.ORG tells me the UEFI BIOS is not programmed correctly.

ASRock claims it is Microsoft's fault. I guess ASRock is referring to the boot .EFI file but I can't get any answer from Microsoft.

 

[Saltgrass]

That is interesting, you would think ASRock would make note of that situation in the manual.

I was thinking possibly it was related to the formatting of the floppy. Since the UEFI does not like extended partitions on a secondary internal or external hard drive during boot, maybe there is a correlation. My USB floppy seems to work fine.

All I might suggest is to disable the controller in device manager. Then reboot and re-enable it after rebooting to see if it might be picked up then. You may have to do a device search to find the controller, but since a floppy doesn't act like a USB device, it may not help. If it doesn't, boot without a floppy in the drive, if you have not already done so.

 

[Pauli]

I'd say it's not really a Microsoft issue. It's a BIOS issue. Any flaw is within the BIOS = ASRock part. Microsoft = Windows comes along after the basic boot.

Question: why do you need a floppy?

 

[Saltgrass]

The UEFI Bios I have seen also have options during boot to allow Legacy/UEFI OpRoms. You might try changing any of those to the other option, and play with anything that mentions legacy enabled or disabled.

 

[Rick Dee]

I appreciate all the questions and suggestions, but the fact is I purchased a motherboard with a floppy controller and a floppy disk cable connector. This is absolutely nothing in the literature and the user manual cautioning about the floppy disk drive not being detected on a Windows 7 x64 OS booting under UEFI on a NTFS formatted GPT disk.

The floppy disk is enabled in the UEFI BIOS or else I would not be able to boot from a MS-DOS disk. The floppy disk drive is recognized when booting Windows 7 x64 on a MBR disk under BIOS.

ASRock insists the problem is a Microsoft fault and Microsoft will not respond to any inquiries about the situation.