Formatting a floppy

[Guest]

When I attempt to format a floppy, I am told I can't and that I need to see
if the drive is being used. I am unable to read anything on the drive and it
keeps giving me the message that the diskette is not formatted.

 

[Unknown]

Lots of info at MS on this subject.

 

[Guest]

Hi Pete,

Try with another floppy, verify the integrity of floppy drive pins and cable.
Pins could be damaged.

Verify that the cable connection between the floppy and motherboard is
correct.

Push the floppy disk into the drive quickly.

Check if the floppy drive button remains a little bit inside. In this last
case the floppy
drive is not well positioned and can't be read.

Best regards
Alessandro

 

[Jim Macklin]

Bad cable. Possibly damaged sensor in the drive.

New cable $2 new drive $10-20


--
The people think the Constitution protects their rights;
But government sees it as an obstacle to be overcome.


| When I attempt to format a floppy, I am told I can't and
that I need to see
| if the drive is being used. I am unable to read anything
on the drive and it
| keeps giving me the message that the diskette is not
formatted.
| --
| Pete

 

[johnf]

There is definitely an issue documented with floppies & XP, but AFAIK, no
easy fix to date.
This is due to MS for some reason dropping 3-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.

 

[QuietOne]

How are you trying to format it ?

If you are going via Explorer (not Internet Explorer) then be careful not to
highlight the drive (A: or whatever yours is) by left clicking on it.
If you do, then when you try to format you will get the message "in use"
because it is in use by explorer. Crazy isn't it?

Click on say C: drive then *right* click on A: and choose format from the
menu.
Good luck.
Geoff

 

[Gareth Tuckwell]

Select my computer on the left hand side of Explorer and select (highlight,
not double-click) on the A: drive on the right hand side of explorer. Then
do format.