Cannot format floppies

  • Thread starter Thread starter Don Madsen
  • Start date Start date
D

Don Madsen

I can no longer format floppies from Windows 2000. Booting to an emergency
boot floppy does permit formatting. The error message is "Windows cannot
complete the format". Running a command prompt from Windows and attemting to
format give a final message "The device is busy .."
 
For starters, I would try to format different floppy disks.
If this fails then I would try a different floppy disk drive.
You can pick up second-hand ones for next to nothing -
ask your friendly computer dealer.
 
You could have a bad drive. You could have bad sectors on some floppies,
too. Try formatting on another W2K machine. Also, you might try using some
other floppies. I've had the problem before on another box, but I was having
intermitant(sp?) problems with some other items at that time, like everyonce
in a while the posting not counting all of my RAM. W2K is funny finicky
about formatting anyways.

Hope this helps,

don
=----=



I can no longer format floppies from Windows 2000. Booting to an emergency
boot floppy does permit formatting. The error message is "Windows cannot
complete the format". Running a command prompt from Windows and attemting to
format give a final message "The device is busy .."
 
Thanks Jim, but I had already tried removing and reinstalling both the
floppy disk controller and drive. It is very fustrating. I have also cleaned
the drive. It doesn't seem to be a hardware or floppy problem as I have
tried many different floppys that will format on a 98 computer. Also on this
computer it formats from a command prompt without any problems . Therefore,
it seems like a Windows 2000 problem. Floppys used to format without any
problem.
 
Back
Top