3.5" floppy drive listed as 5.25" by XP on Dell Optiplex

[Vince]

Hi, all:

A newly installed XP-sp1 on Dell Optiplex GX1 takes my 3.5" floppy drive as
5.25" and the drive cannot be used anymore. Whenever a disk is inserted, XP
insists the disk need to be formatted, certainly the drive cannot handle
5.25" format. Deleting the drive from device manager and re-run add hardware
did not work, the same 5.25" drive was added. Updating BIOS to the newest
from Dell did not solve the problem.
BIOS setting is 3.5" floppy and booting to DOS with floppy disk on the same
drive is just fine. So, the problem is solely XP-related, not hardware
itself.
What should I do? Any suggestion is highly appreciated.

Vince.

 

[John Coode]

Hi, all:

A newly installed XP-sp1 on Dell Optiplex GX1 takes my 3.5" floppy drive as
5.25" and the drive cannot be used anymore. Whenever a disk is inserted, XP
insists the disk need to be formatted, certainly the drive cannot handle
5.25" format. Deleting the drive from device manager and re-run add hardware
did not work, the same 5.25" drive was added. Updating BIOS to the newest
from Dell did not solve the problem.
BIOS setting is 3.5" floppy and booting to DOS with floppy disk on the same
drive is just fine. So, the problem is solely XP-related, not hardware
itself.
What should I do? Any suggestion is highly appreciated.

Vince.

Just a thought for what its worth, which may be nothing. Run regedit.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/MountedDevices.
Use Export on the File menu to backup the key, then look at the
\DosDevices\ values at the bottom. Delete \DosDevices\A: and
also B: if you have it, then reboot. This will force XP to remount the
drive.

Second thought. Is the floppy plugged into the end connector of the floppy
cable,
not the middle one? I think modern cables only have an end one anyway so
this is a long shot.

 

[Guest]

check your BIOS settings at the start... make sure that its not a 5.12 drive.. hope this helps.. thx for readin
-Jonathan