3.5 floppy question

[Guest]

I use Xp Pro at school as well as home. When I format and use a disk at home
and take it to school, it says that it needs to be formatted. When I format
and use a disk at school, I can use it on my home system but, if I add a
document at home, it becomes unreadable at school. I have tried a few
machines at school with the same results. My computer is fairly new(1 year)
and came with XP installed. Thanks for any help offered.

 

[Service Pack]

We have this problem also here but I think we have pinned it down to the
LS120 (SuperDrive) that we're using. We also think that we have minimized
the problem by telling users to use new and formatted floppys instead of
formatting it themselves. The best solution that I have seen is to stay
away from floppy completely and use USB thumb drive. Just bought a 256MB
Lexar from Fry's for $39.

 

[johnf]

There's definitely an issue documented with floppies & XP, but AFAIK, no
easy fix to date.
This is due to MS for some reason dropping three-mode floppy drivers from XP
& normally it gives error messages such as ""Floppy Disk is Not Accessible,
Not Formatted, or Not Recognized by Windows".

Try formatting a floppy on a non-XP PC, copying anything to the floppy, then
see if XP will recognise & read it.

 

[VManes]

Yes, avoid floppies with XP - its driver does not play nice with all floppy
drive hardware. There is a driver that can be found, but it's not
certified. Considering the size of floppies, they don't often do a lot of
good any more anyway. Use USB drives or rewriteable CDs.

<Conspiracy theory> Purposely putting a crappy driver in XP is part of the
Wintel conspiracy to drive people away from old hardware that they don't
want to support. In a similar manner, parallel port printing is badly
supported in XP, hoping to drive us all to USB connected
printers.</Conspiracy theory>

Val

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We have this problem also here but I think we have pinned it down to the
LS120 (SuperDrive) that we're using. We also think that we have minimized
the problem by telling users to use new and formatted floppys instead of
formatting it themselves. The best solution that I have seen is to stay
away from floppy completely and use USB thumb drive. Just bought a 256MB
Lexar from Fry's for $39.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all of your replies, one of those Oh, now i know.

 

[Touch Base]

Floppy problems? Please read your answer is at the end of the thread

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&rnum=1

 

[johnf]

I already tried that one a couple of times, but had no success, that's why I
said in my previous post "but AFAIK, no easy fix to date."

I remember the bit that says -

"Click the "Next" button to begin the driver file copy. Once the file copy
is complete, your floppy disk drive will access 3 times (checking all 3
"modes"). This is normal. Click the "Finish" button when the driver
installation is complete."

From memory, the 'disk drive will access 3 times (checking all 3 "modes")'
bit didn't happen.

Oh, well, I'll have one more try.

In the meantime., I'm using 'Alkanost FloppyFormat' to format floppies that
XP doesn't recognise - (then XP will write to it), and 'BadCopy Pro' to
extract data from floppies that XP refuses to read.

 

[Rich]

I will definitely try this on a couple of machines. I've been running into
this ridiculous floppy problem for over a year. There are more dead floppies
laying around the administration office than at a DOS fest convention.

I've even had so called "expert" gurus respond back that "there is no
problem with there floppies and it must be my machines".

I wasn't born yesterday and I've been working on these Personal Confusers
for 15 years. I just knew it had to have something to do with the drivers or
the way that XP (AND Win2K) talk to a floppy drive, but I haven't had time
to go after 'pet projects'.

I would like to thank you again for sharing this.

 

[Touch Base]

The things we have to do to get around the inadequacies of Windows with
third party program etc etc

 

[Don MI]

I use Xp Pro at school as well as home. When I format and use a disk at
home
and take it to school, it says that it needs to be formatted. When I
format
and use a disk at school, I can use it on my home system but, if I add a
document at home, it becomes unreadable at school. I have tried a few
machines at school with the same results. My computer is fairly new(1
year)
and came with XP installed. Thanks for any help offered.

Have you considered an USB mini-drive {sold under various brands and
names}? Low cost and more reliable than floppies.

Don

 

[Guest]

I have the same issue. It is an XP problem for sure. I had it work once
when I turned off my Firewall and reinstalled the drive and controller but
then, after rebooting, the problem came back and the floppy hasn't worked
since. I wish my Computer were that failsafe to where it wouldn't screw up
like I can't get my floppy to work! I have tried every fix on this
newsgroup. I know floppys are done by by-golly, it should still WORK!

Stevo