Win 98 disks - formatting

Try the floppy.

I have had this one in the past, where a disk will work on one but not the other. How old is the 98 box? I believe that it is a hardware problem with the FDD in the 98 box, where a disk from that box is unreadable in another PC as the heads are out of alignment. Does a 98 disk work in any other computer?
If the answer is no then the problem is the FDD.

If the answer is yes, try using a disk formatted on the Xp box in the 98. You may find that this will work on both, if the 98 floppy is not too far gone. If it doesn't then the problem may lie with the floppy in the XP box.

Sorry, don't think this is a software problem. Maybe I'm wrong, but there's no harm in trying. I have had this before and the answer was stick another FDD in and bin the culprit.

Good Luck

Your problem is more than likely a hardware problem.
Many people use the floppy drive too much they should sacve files to the hdd then work on them and return them to the floppy disk to move them ( in many case people run an application file constantly using the floppy drive this will inevitably cause wear and tear on the device which is indeed fragile and replaceable)

Another thing to consider is that FDD's are really built down to a price these days. Trade price is around ?2 for a branded FDD these days. The enevitable upshot is they are fussier about discs and media from other drives than they used to be.

My best guess is that the FDD in the 98 machine isnt perfect, and the one in the XP machine is being fussy about it.

Try formatting a disc in the XP and seeing if the 98 machine can read it. Then try a disc formatted in the 98 machine in a few othe PC's. If you can get reads in both cases it is just 'fussiness'.

Before resorting to swapping either of the drives give em both a blow with compressed air. It might be that simple to fix.

Could it be that the floppy disk is pre-formatted with no BIOS parameter block (BPB) in the boot sector?
Some pre-formatted floppy disks (especially older stock) don't have a BPD written to the boot sector. Experiment by formatting in the Win98 first (even though the floppy is pre-formatted) then re-trying between the two pc's.
This will eliminate that as a problem.

Sounds like an alignment problem.

This is a common problem that is not seen so much today as the floppy discs are now better and used less. Floppy discs have electronic tracks on them that data is stored on, when a disk is formatted the tracks are laid out on the disc by the floppy drive being used to format the disc. If a floppy drive has laid out the tracks slightly out of line from where another floppy disc is expecting the track then the other floppy can not read the disc and it can note many types of errors including bad crc or unformatted.

This is an allignment problem that is usually caused by wear and tear on one of the floppy drives, usually the one used to do the formatting. It used to be possible to buy floppy disc alignment discs and software that allowed you to re-align your floppy to the accepted format. This process kind of died out with the 3.5" floppy discs as they were much more reliable and less likely to move within the case.

Suggest you iuse a different data transfer process or try a disc formatted in the receiving machine, or buy and instal a new floppy drive in the first machine.

im not sure if this helps...
like answer 8 said..
floppy uses fat, the dos utility on the 98 floppy is using fat and if u are using ntfs on xp, reading the floppy could be an issue. im not sure, just an educated guess. iv had the same problem in the past. never found the solution.