Unable to save to floppy drive A or CD/DVD

[Guest]

I am trying to save a file to floppy drive A. Message is "write protected" or
"disk error" Any disk I try, I get the same error. I have saved files in the
past with no problem. I don't know when this started since I don't save files
often.
I CAN read from any disk. I attempted to install updated drives but I need
the startup disk in which I can't find at this time. I attempted to download
them from the Microsoft website but I was not successful in finding what I
need.
Can someone help me please.
Thank You

 

[Bob I]

New anti-virus program interfering? For the floppys the little tab has
to be closed to write to it.

 

[Guest]

The little tab is closed and how would I know if the anti-virus is
interferring? I did try to download one recently, but it was unsuccessful.

 

[Bob I]

Ok, how about you take this from the top, are we talking about ONLY
drive A? Is there any indication in Device Manager of a problem? Are you
trying to copy the file to A in Windows Explorer? Which error message
are you getting "write protected" OR "disk error"?

 

[Guest]

Thanks for responding so quickly. This is only happening on drive A. While I
was in a MS Word document, I tried to save it to A drive using "File Save As"
in the Word program. The error I received was "write protected or disk
error" I thought it was a disk problem so I purchased new disks that are
formatted for my PC.
HP Pavillion, Windows XP. Device Manager says my drive A is working
properly. I tried troubleshooting and had no luck. I read something that said
I may need to update my drivers. I don't have the startup disk so I went to
Microsoft Website and attempted to download drivers, I had no luck finding
them. I tried to rollback the drives as suggested in troubleshooting but it
appeared that I hadn't updated drives since the install so there were no
drivers to rollback to.
Thanks again for responding.

 

[Bob I]

First let me say this and then decide if there is a problem.
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER save to the removable drives from the Office
applications. The temp file that Word uses is placed in the same
location as the original and so takes up twice the space as the
original. Way to many things go wrong with floppies to be trying to work
with them directly. ONLY save to the hard drive and then drag and drop
the COPY to the floppy drive in Windows Explorer. To many people lose
their only copies of documents trying to work off floppy drives.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, I tried what you suggested and it still came up with "the disk is
write-protected. Remove the write-protection or use another disk." Do you
think the floppy drive could have gone out, and that is why I am receiving
the message? I also was thinking maybe somehow I lost access to save to the
drive, I don't know how it could have happened since I am the only one using
my computer, but do you think that is possible? I tried to read up on how to
give access to the drive but I didn't understand all that technical stuff.