winxp keeps breaking my floppies

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kelly
  • Start date Start date
K

Kelly

I have a problem when I save regular every day files
(i.e. .jpg, .bmp, .txt, .doc(97), etc.) to a floppy on my
winxp pro machine. Everything seems to copy over just
fine and as long as I stay with winxp the disk is fine.
The problem occurs when I try to take the files on the
floppy to a machine that's running win98se...the floppy
takes forever to read and many times won't even open, and
I often get a message saying that the disk is damaged/not
formatted. Once I click through the error messages and
remove the disk, I take it back to the winxp machine and
then have the same problem in winxp. I end up loosing the
disk because it won't read OR format. HELP! I need to be
able to take these files back and forth between machines.
Does anyone know a fix for this?

Thanks,
Kelly
 
Kelly bashed at the keyboard and said:
I have a problem when I save regular every day files
(i.e. .jpg, .bmp, .txt, .doc(97), etc.) to a floppy on my
winxp pro machine. Everything seems to copy over just
fine and as long as I stay with winxp the disk is fine.
The problem occurs when I try to take the files on the
floppy to a machine that's running win98se...the floppy
takes forever to read and many times won't even open, and
I often get a message saying that the disk is damaged/not
formatted. Once I click through the error messages and
remove the disk, I take it back to the winxp machine and
then have the same problem in winxp. I end up loosing the
disk because it won't read OR format. HELP! I need to be
able to take these files back and forth between machines.
Does anyone know a fix for this?

Thanks,
Kelly
Click to expand...

Sounds like the floppy drive on the 98 machine is not working.....
 
I don't think it's because the 98 machine's floppy isn't working. That
happens at work here as well; lot's of xp machines floppy output can't be
read by the 98SE machines. (or should I say "machine").

Hopefully someone will have some insight to this.
 
Bryce said:
I don't think it's because the 98 machine's floppy isn't working. That
happens at work here as well; lot's of xp machines floppy output can't be
read by the 98SE machines. (or should I say "machine").

Hopefully someone will have some insight to this.
Click to expand...

Rather than argue about it, get a good hardware diagnostic suite (when this
happened to me, I used a trial version of amidiag, but ami doesn't seem to
offer a trial anymore) and check out both floppy drives. These things can
fail, sometimes in very subtle ways. The good thing is that floppy drives
are extremely cheap and also easy to remove/replace.
 
-----Original Message-----


Rather than argue about it, get a good hardware diagnostic suite (when this
happened to me, I used a trial version of amidiag, but ami doesn't seem to
offer a trial anymore) and check out both floppy drives. These things can
fail, sometimes in very subtle ways. The good thing is that floppy drives
are extremely cheap and also easy to remove/replace.

.
Click to expand...

It doesn't seem to matter which win98/win2000 machine I
take the floppy to so I don't think it's the other
machines' drives....maybe it is my drive.

Also sometimes it happens in reverse order...from win98
to winxp...winxp can't read the disk...then back to win98
and it can't read it either.

Funny thing is that it doesn't happen all of the time
with all of the file types...sometimes it's ok and
sometimes not.
 
| I don't think it's because the 98 machine's floppy isn't working. That
| happens at work here as well; lot's of xp machines floppy output can't be
| read by the 98SE machines. (or should I say "machine").
|
| Hopefully someone will have some insight to this.

I've seen and heard of something similar occuring too often on many XP systems.
While cheaply constructed floppy drives may also come into play here, I'm
suspicious that XP has some basic problems with FAT12.

Larc



§§§ - Please raise temperature of mail to reply by e-mail - §§§
 
no arguing going on here. Both drives were replaced and still the 98SE
machine didn't recognize the xp machine's floppies.
 
Kelly said:
I have a problem when I save regular every day files
(i.e. .jpg, .bmp, .txt, .doc(97), etc.) to a floppy on my
winxp pro machine. Everything seems to copy over just
fine and as long as I stay with winxp the disk is fine.
The problem occurs when I try to take the files on the
floppy to a machine that's running win98se...the floppy
takes forever to read and many times won't even open, and
I often get a message saying that the disk is damaged/not
formatted. Once I click through the error messages and
remove the disk, I take it back to the winxp machine and
then have the same problem in winxp. I end up loosing the
disk because it won't read OR format. HELP! I need to be
able to take these files back and forth between machines.
Does anyone know a fix for this?
Click to expand...

Often, the problem lies with the floppy drive rather
than in the OS or in the floppy itself. The head position
setting on one or both drives may be out of tolerance,
which can cause a floppy written on one drive not to
be readable on the other and vice-versa, even though
the floppy can be written and read just fine on the same
drive.

-- Bob Day
 
Larc said:
| I don't think it's because the 98 machine's floppy isn't working. That
| happens at work here as well; lot's of xp machines floppy output can't be
| read by the 98SE machines. (or should I say "machine").
|
| Hopefully someone will have some insight to this.

I've seen and heard of something similar occuring too often on many XP systems.
While cheaply constructed floppy drives may also come into play here, I'm
suspicious that XP has some basic problems with FAT12.

Larc

§§§ - Please raise temperature of mail to reply by e-mail - §§§
Click to expand...

You make a good point, which is reinforced by Bryce's second post, explaining that
he still had problems after replacing the drives. Perhaps the fact that many new
computers -- particularly laptops -- don't even come standard with floppy drives
anymore led to a less-than thorough shakedown of XP's behavior with such drives.
I'm still inclined to think it's a hardware problem though -- see the post from Bob
Day -- and a good diagnostic program will at least eliminate that possibility and
focus all of the attention on the software.

In the meantime, the OP's real problem -- transferring files between 2 machines --
could beworked-around either by emailing the files (if the machines are far apart)
or networking or using a pc-to-pc cable if they are close.
 
Hi all,

Thanks for your replies.

I have now tried (repeatedly) to 'break' floppies between
my two machines at home ( a winxp pro and a win98se). I
have been completely unable to duplicate the problem
although it used to occur here. The other place that this
has occured has been at work...bringing in two different
floppies from my winxp pro to two different win98se
machines at two different times. Each time the floppy was
unreadable on the win98se and then spoiled for all other
machines and won't even reformat on any machine.

I'm completely baffled!

Would love to hear any more ideas... I haven't used any
software to test my drive yet but will do so soon.

Thanks again,
Kelly
 
Kelly said:
I have a problem when I save regular every day files
(i.e. .jpg, .bmp, .txt, .doc(97), etc.) to a floppy on my
winxp pro machine. Everything seems to copy over just
fine and as long as I stay with winxp the disk is fine.
The problem occurs when I try to take the files on the
floppy to a machine that's running win98se...the floppy
takes forever to read and many times won't even open, and
I often get a message saying that the disk is damaged/not
formatted. Once I click through the error messages and
remove the disk, I take it back to the winxp machine and
then have the same problem in winxp. I end up loosing the
disk because it won't read OR format. HELP! I need to be
able to take these files back and forth between machines.
Does anyone know a fix for this?
Click to expand...

XP doesn't read many floppies formatted in non-XP computers, but I
thought the reverse was okay. My suggestion would be to format some
floppies with the XP computer and see if they're read by both.
 
I just checked and my floppies are all Imation. I used
the diagnostic software that was suggested as well and my
floppy drive passed all tests.

I'm feeling more convinced it's an xp issue.

Thanks again for all replies!

Kelly
 
I just checked and my floppies are all Imation. I used
the diagnostic software that was suggested as well and my
floppy drive passed all tests.

I'm feeling more convinced it's an xp issue.

Thanks again for all replies!

Kelly
Click to expand...

Could be the drive heads are mis-aligned and damaging the media. If this
is the case diagnostics will still report the floppy drive as working OK.
Buy a new floppy drive and stick it in the box. They're dirt cheap. Or
better yet get a solid state USB drive and carry hundreds of files around
with you.
Gary
 
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