Does anyone know the fix for floppy drives when running Win XP/2000? We are having floppy problems, they will read on one pc and when moving to another it wants to format. Help please, this is a real enigma.

Does anyone know the fix for floppy drives when running Win XP/2000? We are having floppy problems, they will read on one pc and when moving to another it wants to format. Help please, this is a real enigma.

Need more info m8 !!!!!
What operating system is it working on ect

Check to see if one of your systems is set up in the Bios to read only 720kb floppy disks (normally win95)

Need more info m8 !!!!!
What operating system is it working on ect

Check to see if one of your systems is set up in the Bios to read only 720kb floppy disks (normally win95)



We are running Windows XP in our computer lab. Its a problem that is just starting to pop up. The students are bring in 1.44 floppy disks already formatted. On one machine they will be able to access their work, but when moving to another it acts as if it can't read the floppy. All of the computers in our lab are the same, no difference hardware or software. I found one fix, but its still reoccuring. Do you know of another that may be out there.

See if you are able to read the floppys when you boot the PCs in Safe Mode or Safe mode command prompt? Are these preformatted floppys all one brand? Can you try to have the students copy all the files from the floppy disk to a Temp folder, then try reformatting the disk in the same machine and then transfer the files back to the floppy and see if it can be read in one of the other lab PCs. I assume that you have robust antivirus s/w loaded on these PCs set to scan floppies to prevent students from xferring a boot-block virus to all of your nice, neat lab machines. Floppy drives and disks seem to be growing ever more unreliable as they are quickly fading out as a standard feature on PC systems. Usb thumb drives are the way to go.

Mike

The disks were preformatteda and XP has problems with that occasionally. Once you reformat them in XP it works. Also, we are swtiching over to the thumb drives. Thanks for the advice.

Does anyone know the fix for floppy drives when running Win XP/2000? We are having floppy problems, they will read on one pc and when moving to another it wants to format. Help please, this is a real enigma.

Check the settings in your system setup (BIOS).

What I believe your problem is, is a difference of head alignment in the floppy drives. The best answer to your problem is to keep the students on the same computer. If you could realign the heads, or replace the drives the data on their disks would be unreadable.

My experience of pre-formatted floppies is that they aren't brilliant. I was regularly junking at least one per box until I started doing the obvious and formatting them all in my own drive before use. Since then I've had no more spurious floppy failures. So my advice is:

1) Choose a machine to do all the disks
2) Make sure it's virus free - this is a vital step
3) Have students bring their new disks in before they use them
4) Do a full (unconditional) format on the lot
5) Give them back to their owners

You should now have no problems reading them on at least one of your PCs. I would normally recommend booting the PC from a DOS floppy and using FORMAT A: /U but I have no experience of XP whatsoever so I don't know if this will work for you. Perhaps someone else can advise on this point.

A bit of information I picked up when I was one of the very few Sinclair QL "experts" here in the US in the mid 1980's (was it that long?). Take the new floppy disk and erase it with a video tape eraser (I think Radio Shack still sells one). This seems to "Shake Up" the magnetic particles an make them more receptive to recording. This greatly improved my success with generic 5.25" and 3.5" disks. Hope this helps.
Jim

The disks were preformatteda and XP has problems with that occasionally. Once you reformat them in XP it works. Also, we are swtiching over to the thumb drives. Thanks for the advice.
sorry for being late but the answer is obvious=when all others can't read, the recorder is out of whack and so cheep it should have been replaced immediatelly.