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XP wont recognize 98 floppies

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14 replies

by cyntek1

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I am dealing with a pirated version of XP Pro. that my employers former technicians installed on the system (that may be the problem) butI have no access to a legal XP Pro machine to test on. I would like to know if it is common for XP to not recognize floppies that were formatted on a 98 machine.

14 replies

by ann777

It is NOT common. It may be the floppy drive that they were formatted on i a bad drive.

by ann777

Win98 floppies should both read and write in a WinXP computer. The OS may be the problem, or the floppy drive may be the problem or both.

Have you tried these floppies on another computer and had no problem?

If yes, then I'd recommend you start by reformatting with the WinXP (with a purchased license) cd and starting over with this computer.

by cyntek1

Two different floppies were tryed from floppy drives that were in working condition.

by shasca

I have a lot of floppy problems on my New Dell as have coworkers. I have yet been able to create a 98 startup disc on this PC for another project.

by pesk, mbcs, mcse, mcitp, sts

The problem (most likely) is with the FDD drivers. You see, FDDs used to be more common than they are now and every manufacturer is trying to phase them out and as such you no longer have seperate drivers for FDDs. They now integrate things like ZIP, LS drives, etc. into new systems to discourage the use of floppies. Another reason is the fact that FDD use LEGACY technology (DOS) to work with the OS (in this case XP) and the OS (XP) does not like, one bit, any particular piece of software accessing a drive directly and will therefore block it, or attempt to anyway...

by jray

Hi,

I run a mixed system of win2k server, XP Pro's, and Windows 98 clients. On top of this, no two machines are the same. The only time I have encountered this problem has been when a floppy drive has gone bad (misaligned). Replacing the floppy drive should correct your problem.

by loki777

I have encountered this problem on numerous occasions with different clients. Format them with the XP machine and they can be used on both the XP and 98 machines.

by cyntek1

Thank you for your response. Formatting on the XP machine made the floppy accessible for both OS's. Unfortunately it didn’t solve, how to access floppies received from clients using 98.

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