Floppy Disk Drive

[Jeff]

I'm running Windows XP Pro. Every time I insert a floppy
disk it says that the disk is not formatted. I try to
format it but the it says Windows could not format the
disk. Does anyone have a solution for my problem?

 

[TJ]

This appears to be a common issue lately.
I have a fresh XP install. Patched to current. Cannot
format a floppy. I assumed hardware issues so I swapped
the cable 3 times and I swapped the floppy drive itself
for 3 or 4 different ones I had. Could not format still.
I rebooted the machine from a DOS floppy and was then
able to format 5 floppies in a row with 0 bytes in bad
sectors, all 5 had been floppies that would not format
under XP. I rebooted an went into XP Safe Mode COmmand
Prompt only and was also able to format all floppies just
fine. I rebooted into Safe Mode and could no longer
format floppies. Clearly the fact that I could format
fine in DOS and XP Safe Mode Command Prompt says the
hardware is fine and the media is fine. This happened
last weekend at home and then at work today we are seeing
a number of people reporting floppy issues under XP. I
suspect that some sort of update has caused a problem
here. I read a number of posts suggesting anti-virus but
this machine has a new fresh install or XP and I havn't
put anti-virus in yet, so AV is not the issue.