The disk in drive A is not formatted

[Richard]

Can somebody help me ?
I get this message when i try to access my floppy disk
drive.
I did several checks, and no solution. Driver ok,
switched floppy drive (same problem) Acces to the drive
is working (formatted a diskette to boot from Western
digital diag and working ok)
I cannot read all my old diskettes nor format a new one.
Has it something to do since I formatted harddisk NTFS,
single partition ?
Thanks for your precious help

 

[Malke]

Can somebody help me ?
I get this message when i try to access my floppy disk
drive.
I did several checks, and no solution. Driver ok,
switched floppy drive (same problem) Acces to the drive
is working (formatted a diskette to boot from Western
digital diag and working ok)
I cannot read all my old diskettes nor format a new one.
Has it something to do since I formatted harddisk NTFS,
single partition ?
Thanks for your precious help

No, this has nothing to do with the file system. This is a known issue
in XP. The best workaround is to format some new floppies in the XP
machine. Then take the old floppies to an older computer running Win9x
ME which will read the old floppies with no problem. Copy the data from
the old floppies onto the old computer's hard drive. Now copy that data
to the new floppies you made in your XP machine. Your XP machine will
be able to read the data now.

Malke

 

[Lee Shipman]

Richard, I had the same problem and discovered that with WinXP, it chokes
when asked to format 720kb floppies. However, here's a note that I made to
myself about that:

Wanted to format a 720kb floppy but found that winxp doesn't support that
using the file manager. However, you can do this through <start><run> cmd,
then typing "format a:" It recognizes & correctly formats to 720kb.



See if that works for you.



Lee

 

[richard]

Thanks for your help.

I will try it, but the main problem is I can't format a
floppy from my XP machine.

I just proceeded whith the utility to make setup
diskettes (6) for Win XP and it worked, and after when I
try to read these diskets, in the cmd prompt, here is the
message I get from comd prompt:

C:\>a:
The volume does not contain a recognized file system.
Please make sure that all required file system drivers
are loaded and that the v
olume is not corrupted.

I also formatted diskettes from the cmd prompt, and it
gives me this message after when I try to read it:


C:\>


Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Richard>c:

C:\>format a:
Insert new disk for drive A:
and press ENTER when ready...
The type of the file system is FAT.
Verifying 1.44M
Initializing the File Allocation Table (FAT)...
Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)? fat 16
Format complete.

1 457 664 bytes total disk space.
1 457 664 bytes available on disk.

512 bytes in each allocation unit.
2 847 allocation units available on disk.

12 bits in each FAT entry.

Volume Serial Number is 5C31-F12B


C:\>a:
The volume does not contain a recognized file system.
Please make sure that all required file system drivers
are loaded and that the v
olume is not corrupted.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Thanks for your help.

I will try it, but the main problem is I can't format a
floppy from my XP machine.

You may have the trouble that I have on this machine: there appears to
be a fault developed on the drive (it used to be OK) so there is some
signal that it is failing to provide and which Windows formatting (in XP
or in ME) requires. I find that the only way I can format a floppy is
to boot a Win98 startup floppy and use the FORMAT A: of that (changing
to the disk to be formatted. After which the disk is usable in XP