Please Insert a Floppy Disk Into Drive A

[Protocol]

This has been happening since upgrading to SP2 many months ago. I have
three PCs and all are suffering from this affliction. The problem is
when I put a floppy disk into the drive and try to read it, I get the
message "Please Insert a Floppy Disk Into Drive A". If I cancel, then
try again, it usually (but not always) reads OK. I know there are many
other people having this problem, but I haven't seen any good answer to
the problem yet.
The strange thing is that all three floppies on each PC will read fine
outside of Windows. In DOS for example. So I am almost certain that it
is a Windows problem. In particular, a Windows XP SP2 problem. On one
PC, I have tried three different brands of drives. A Panasonic, generic
and Sony. I have also replaced the floppy cable. I have thrown away
many floppy disks and bought new ones. I have noticed on other PCs that
I repair that they are also having trouble reading floppies. What is
going on? Can someone please help me sort out this puzzle? By the way.
Floppies are still very handy for doing certain BIOS updates, flashing
video cards and are great for replacing files when working in the
Recovery Console. So they are not dead yet. At least not for people
fixing PCs.

 

[Roy Coorne]

This has been happening since upgrading to SP2 many months ago. I have
three PCs and all are suffering from this affliction. The problem is
when I put a floppy disk into the drive and try to read it, I get the
message "Please Insert a Floppy Disk Into Drive A". If I cancel, then
try again, it usually (but not always) reads OK. I know there are many
other people having this problem, but I haven't seen any good answer to
the problem yet.
The strange thing is that all three floppies on each PC will read fine
outside of Windows. In DOS for example. So I am almost certain that it
is a Windows problem. In particular, a Windows XP SP2 problem. On one
PC, I have tried three different brands of drives. A Panasonic, generic
and Sony. I have also replaced the floppy cable. I have thrown away
many floppy disks and bought new ones. I have noticed on other PCs that
I repair that they are also having trouble reading floppies. What is
going on? Can someone please help me sort out this puzzle? By the way.
Floppies are still very handy for doing certain BIOS updates, flashing
video cards and are great for replacing files when working in the
Recovery Console. So they are not dead yet. At least not for people
fixing PCs.

Windows XP prefers floppy disks which have been formatted from within
Windows XP... may be there is a connection...

Roy

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

This has been happening since upgrading to SP2 many months ago. I have
three PCs and all are suffering from this affliction. The problem is
when I put a floppy disk into the drive and try to read it, I get the
message "Please Insert a Floppy Disk Into Drive A". If I cancel, then
try again, it usually (but not always) reads OK. I know there are many
other people having this problem, but I haven't seen any good answer
to the problem yet.
The strange thing is that all three floppies on each PC will read fine
outside of Windows. In DOS for example. So I am almost certain that it
is a Windows problem. In particular, a Windows XP SP2 problem.

Read here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=140060

 

[Protocol]

Awesome guys. Thank you so much. I wish the answer to this problem was
more documented. I wasted a lot of time and disks with this problem.

Much appreciated...

Time to format some floppies.

 

[Protocol]

I guess I spoke too soon. Unfortunately this doesn't work. I tried to
use a floppy yesterday and the same thing happens.