Sony USB Floppy won't work after SP2

[Salmonella]

My Sony USB floppy model MPF-88E does not show up anywhere on My
Computer, and when I try to save a file, the floppy drive is not an
option available. The only time the little light on the floppy unit
comes on is if the floppy unit is plugged into any of the 3 USB ports on
my Compaq Presario R3000 laptop.

If there is a floppy in the drive, the boot stops and a message comes up
advising that it's not a boot disk, please insert a boot disk and hit
any key to continue. I take the floppy out of the Sony unit, leave it
connected to the USB port and hit any key. The boot continues and
Windows XP Pro comes up, but the floppy drive is not available, and does
not show up in My Computer or any other place I can find. The only
floppy drive in Hardware is Standard Floppy Drive. I uninstall that, and
Windows Plug and Play does not seem to sense the USB floppy, and I can't
get it to find the Sony USB floppy in a manual Windows Hardware Install.
Yet the Standard Floppy Drive is always back in Hardware at this
point. But I stillcan't find the floppy in My Computer or anywhere else,
and I still can't save to the drive, or effect an installation of the
USB floppy as it did before I installed SP2 for Windows XP Pro.

The drive itself is fine, it installs and works fine on a Windows 98SE
system using the Sony-supplied Windows 98 driver.

 

[Joseph Meehan]

My Sony USB floppy model MPF-88E does not show up anywhere on My
Computer, and when I try to save a file, the floppy drive is not an
option available. The only time the little light on the floppy unit
comes on is if the floppy unit is plugged into any of the 3 USB ports on
my Compaq Presario R3000 laptop.

If there is a floppy in the drive, the boot stops and a message comes up
advising that it's not a boot disk, please insert a boot disk and hit
any key to continue. I take the floppy out of the Sony unit, leave it
connected to the USB port and hit any key. The boot continues and
Windows XP Pro comes up, but the floppy drive is not available, and does
not show up in My Computer or any other place I can find. The only
floppy drive in Hardware is Standard Floppy Drive. I uninstall that, and
Windows Plug and Play does not seem to sense the USB floppy, and I can't
get it to find the Sony USB floppy in a manual Windows Hardware Install.
Yet the Standard Floppy Drive is always back in Hardware at this
point. But I stillcan't find the floppy in My Computer or anywhere else,
and I still can't save to the drive, or effect an installation of the
USB floppy as it did before I installed SP2 for Windows XP Pro.

The drive itself is fine, it installs and works fine on a Windows 98SE
system using the Sony-supplied Windows 98 driver.

My first suggestion is to go to the Sony web site and see if they have
an new driver for it. If you are comfortable with changing your bios
settings, you should be able to turn off booting from floppies so it will
not hang-up if you have a floppy in it when you boot. Of course you could
just keep disks out when you boot.

 

[Salmonella]

My first suggestion is to go to the Sony web site and see if they have
an new driver for it. If you are comfortable with changing your bios
settings, you should be able to turn off booting from floppies so it will
not hang-up if you have a floppy in it when you boot. Of course you could
just keep disks out when you boot.

Sony does not have a new driver, or indeed any sort of driver for
Windows XP. They insist that this model does not need any driver they
supply for Windows XP. Although they supply drivers for previous
versions of windows, this unit is supposed to work fine off of what
windows xp has.

And the problem is not at all that it hangs up when
Windows XP boots. That's what the computer is supposed to do if it
first checks the floppy, then the cd-rom, then the hard drive. I have
checked the boot sequence setup and it clearly lists the Sony drive
including model number at the head of the list. The question is why thy
the computer, once Windows XP Pro is up and going, will not recognize
and list the Sony plug in floppy usb drive in MY Computer as Drive A or
Drive E (as it is listed on a Windows 98 SE desktop.

Clearly, if Windows XP kills usb floppies on laptops,then something is
wrong with the SP2

 

[Salmonella]

My Sony USB floppy model MPF-88E does not show up anywhere on My
Computer, and when I try to save a file, the floppy drive is not an
option available. The only time the little light on the floppy unit
comes on is if the floppy unit is plugged into any of the 3 USB ports on
my Compaq Presario R3000 laptop.

If there is a floppy in the drive, the boot stops and a message comes up
advising that it's not a boot disk, please insert a boot disk and hit
any key to continue. I take the floppy out of the Sony unit, leave it
connected to the USB port and hit any key. The boot continues and
Windows XP Pro comes up, but the floppy drive is not available, and does
not show up in My Computer or any other place I can find. The only
floppy drive in Hardware is Standard Floppy Drive. I uninstall that, and
Windows Plug and Play does not seem to sense the USB floppy, and I can't
get it to find the Sony USB floppy in a manual Windows Hardware Install.
Yet the Standard Floppy Drive is always back in Hardware at this point.
But I stillcan't find the floppy in My Computer or anywhere else, and I
still can't save to the drive, or effect an installation of the USB
floppy as it did before I installed SP2 for Windows XP Pro.

The drive itself is fine, it installs and works fine on a Windows 98SE
system using the Sony-supplied Windows 98 driver.

I have fixed this largely by a process of trial and error and I am
reporting what I did to you in case the same problem comes to your
attention. Maybe my experience will help someone else.

The problem seemed to be that one of the drivers in the middle of the
sequence of usb devices and drivers under "Device Manager" was not up
to date. I suspect that installing Windows XP Service Pack 2 rolled back
the driver for "Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller" to where
it no longer supported usb 2.0, but I'm not sure.

In any case, what worked was to go to Device Manager, click on the plus
sign before "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" to expand that category.
Then, starting at the top of the list of USB devices, right click on
each of them, and select and run"Update driver." If you are connected
to the Internet, the wizard can automatically search for and install an
updated driver, I assume from Microsoft. Apparently if any one of the
drivers in the sequence of devices list is incorrect or out of date (
especially after installing XP SP2) the system will recognize the floppy
drive only during initial boot if a floppy is inside the drive, and not
at all during regular operation. With all updated drivers for the USB
devices in the chain, there is no problem--the usb floppy now works
perfectly.

I hope this helps someone else.

Salmonella10