No, nobody has been using my laptop as a football. In fact, it's brand new. Since it's removable from an ultrabay perhaps it isn't seated firmly. Just to be sure, I will make redhat disks that I know for sure are from floppies that haven't been anywhere near the laptop and test them only on the desktop. I am being very careful with my laptop, and with my floppies, so while misalignment is a possibility, dirtiness should not yet be an issue. There certainly are cleaning methods for floppy drives if that was the problem, however. And again, the floppy that isn't mounting properly on my laptop is fine on the desktop, so I still don't think this is the reason why my redhat brltty-modified floppies aren't running on the desktop. Cheryl