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Cannot access floppy Disks in Windows XP

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by phoenix62

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Hi, I'm new at forums so bear with me...

I am trying to get a flopy disk drive to work within windows XP SP2 with all the updates installed....Everytime I try and do anything with regards to the disk Windows claims that the disk is unformatted and would I like to format it now. I have complied and windows has began the format process. Once the process completes I then try and access my nelwy formatted floppy and windows says that the disk is not accessable as it does not have a valid file system. I suspect there is a bug in XP here. To be complete I have checked that the disk drive works in a linux machine and I have also checked that I can access disks from the XP machine using a knoppix live disk. Surprise surprise I can access floppy disks and write to them. As soon as I boot back into XP though I cannot access the disk. I have also noticed that I cannot access flash drives that have not been formatted with the NTFS file system. Does anybody know of a bug within XP SP2 that prevents you accessing non NTFS file systems and is there a work around. I need to access the floppy drive to load on some SATA drivers so that I can reinstall windows. I can't however because I can't copy the drivers to the 3.5" floppy. I tried streaming the drivers to a custom XP cd but the installation program claims that the drivers are corrupt...unlikely as I downloaded then off the website probably another post anyway.

Of interest is that when I boot the PC with the XP disk and enter the recovery console I can access the floppy drive and there are no errors. This is why I suspect that XP cannot read or mount non NTFS file systems.

Any ideas??

5 replies

by absolutely

Although the NTFS idea was a good one, I know that isn't the case. The problem I've had most often with floppy drives is that the connector does not always have an obvious orientation. If the orientation of the data cable is wrong, the green access light has been stuck "on" as soon as the operating system initializes the drive. You seem to be having a different experience, but it won't hurt to try flipping the right/left sides of the data cable connected to the floppy drive, if there aren't already notches on the cable and drive making that connection idiot-proof, like they are on IDE drives.

If your floppy drives are all idiot-proof, I hope you got a good laugh out of that, but I have had some that were really pretty ambiguous.

A lot of that was a shot in the dark, but I do know that XP SP2 does not have a problem accessing floppy disks in general, and that FAT/FAT16 is the filesystem it will use when formatting them.

by phoenix62

I checked the cable orientation as matter or course having read all the forum posts recently. The cable sockets are polarised as you mentioned to make them idiot proof. I try not to laugh at anyone who is trying to help....its rude!

I also checked the disk on an XP SP2 machine at work and annoyingly the disk is readable. Something is wrong with my XP SP2 installation which is not allowing me to access other file systems. It won't let me read USB sticks until they have been formatted....What I'll do is get my drivers onto a disk and reinstall XP. I have read somewhere that this problem is sometimes fixed by doing that...not much of a fix but a start.

by mellsworth

Ok, I know that this is a little stale, but I have an answer. I have found that dropping to Command (not CMD) and formating and copying the files works.

Also for more reliability access to a USB based Floppy drive works more often than not either way.

Also another way to fix your reload (future proof) Download from driverpacks.net Mass storeage and NIC drivers and follow his instructions to slipstream them in.
Another more flexable but less reliable method is to use NLITE to customize and slipstream the drivers in.

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