Floppy Drive Troubles - Can't Format, etc...

[Tim Bostonia]

XP Home Edition... SP 2... all patches/updates applied...

I'm not able to read from or copy files to a formatted diskette and when I
attempt formatting a floppy disk I get the following error:

A:\ is not accessible... no id address mark was found on the floppy disk

I've searched the knowledge base... tried several different diskettes...
checked the BIOS settings... removed the device and let windows detect new
hardware... turned off antivirus and spyware protection... tried it all in
safe mode...

There really doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the hardware... anyone
got any ideas on what's blocking the device ??

Please help... and thanks... t

 

[Mistoffolees]

XP Home Edition... SP 2... all patches/updates applied...

I'm not able to read from or copy files to a formatted diskette and when I
attempt formatting a floppy disk I get the following error:

A:\ is not accessible... no id address mark was found on the floppy disk

I've searched the knowledge base... tried several different diskettes...
checked the BIOS settings... removed the device and let windows detect new
hardware... turned off antivirus and spyware protection... tried it all in
safe mode...

There really doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the hardware... anyone
got any ideas on what's blocking the device ??

Please help... and thanks... t

Floppy diskette drives are among some of the most unreliable
pieces of hardware. The first thing one should attempt is to
gently blow out the interior of the FDD. If the FDD is not
restored, then replace. They are very inexpensive.

 

[Vin]

I agree that FDD's are very unreliable. Have you tried replacing the
cable? Ribbon cables are not designed to be replaced too many times
before they start causing problems. Only a few things else can be bad:
1. The drive itself. 2. The controller chip on the mobo. 3. the
power connector to the FDD. 4. The ROM chips on the mobo (which
contain the FDD drivers) could have been zapped, but this would likely
show up in many other boot problems.

I'd go with the cable and/or drive itself.

 

[Guest]

I agree that FDD's are very unreliable. Have you tried replacing the
cable? Ribbon cables are not designed to be replaced too many times
before they start causing problems. Only a few things else can be bad:
1. The drive itself. 2. The controller chip on the mobo. 3. the
power connector to the FDD. 4. The ROM chips on the mobo (which
contain the FDD drivers) could have been zapped, but this would likely
show up in many other boot problems.

I'd go with the cable and/or drive itself.

While FDD’s are unreliable I’m getting the impression that most of the FDD
problems lie with XP itself and not the FDD. My internal FDD is also having
a hard time working under XP generating warning messages telling me that the
“device is not readyâ€, refusing to format brand new disks and so on. I have a
removable hard drive system that allows me to swap out my operating system at
will. Under Linux the floppy works perfectly. Therefore the problem lies with
XP and not the hardware. At this point I’ve come to the conclusion that 1)
XP support for FDD’s was flawed to begin with, 2) one of the service packs
introduced broke FDD support, or 3) a security patch introduced a bug.

I’ve tried all the usual steps to get the floppy to work under XP,
uninstall-reinstall, performing a repair install of XP, clearing CMOS all
without any success. Any other suggestions on what to try?

 

[Anna]

While FDD's are unreliable I'm getting the impression that most of the FDD
problems lie with XP itself and not the FDD. My internal FDD is also
having
a hard time working under XP generating warning messages telling me that
the
"device is not ready", refusing to format brand new disks and so on. I
have a
removable hard drive system that allows me to swap out my operating system
at
will. Under Linux the floppy works perfectly. Therefore the problem lies
with
XP and not the hardware. At this point I've come to the conclusion that 1)
XP support for FDD's was flawed to begin with, 2) one of the service packs
introduced broke FDD support, or 3) a security patch introduced a bug.

I've tried all the usual steps to get the floppy to work under XP,
uninstall-reinstall, performing a repair install of XP, clearing CMOS all
without any success. Any other suggestions on what to try?

We're inclined to agree with mhuddy in that there certainly appears to be
something flawed in the XP OS as it involves the detection of floppy disk
drives and/or the data contained on the floppy disks.

Since the introduction of this OS we have encountered too many
non-recognition problems involving floppy disk drives. We fully realize that
many of these problems arise from defective hardware or faulty
configuration, but we are not talking about those situations. It (nearly)
goes without saying that we are referring here *only* to floppy disk drives
that we know to be non-defective and have been properly connected &
configured, together with floppy disks that are similarly non-defective and
contain uncorrupted data.

The problems in this area that we have encountered have been from the very
onset of the introduction of the XP OS. We cannot discern that any SP or
subsequent update has been at the root of this problem.

We've found no real "fix" for this problem, other then substituting another
floppy disk drive (even though we fully understand the one we're replacing
is not defective - we'll nearly always use it without problems in another
machine), or copying the data on the floppy disk to another floppy disk on
another machine and then determine if the data can be accessed on the
original floppy disk drive (and hope no further problems arise with that
device with other floppy disks). We realize, of course, that these "fixes"
are most unsatisfactory, and not really practical for the average user.
Anna

 

[Guest]

We're inclined to agree with mhuddy in that there certainly appears to be
something flawed in the XP OS as it involves the detection of floppy disk
drives and/or the data contained on the floppy disks.

Since the introduction of this OS we have encountered too many
non-recognition problems involving floppy disk drives. We fully realize that
many of these problems arise from defective hardware or faulty
configuration, but we are not talking about those situations. It (nearly)
goes without saying that we are referring here *only* to floppy disk drives
that we know to be non-defective and have been properly connected &
configured, together with floppy disks that are similarly non-defective and
contain uncorrupted data.

The problems in this area that we have encountered have been from the very
onset of the introduction of the XP OS. We cannot discern that any SP or
subsequent update has been at the root of this problem.

We've found no real "fix" for this problem, other then substituting another
floppy disk drive (even though we fully understand the one we're replacing
is not defective - we'll nearly always use it without problems in another
machine), or copying the data on the floppy disk to another floppy disk on
another machine and then determine if the data can be accessed on the
original floppy disk drive (and hope no further problems arise with that
device with other floppy disks). We realize, of course, that these "fixes"
are most unsatisfactory, and not really practical for the average user.
Anna

I did try a new floppy with the same results, XP reporting a variety of
errors. Ultimately I just switched to a USB floppy that in my case was an
acceptable work around.

 

[JohnO]

Under Linux the floppy works perfectly. Therefore the problem lies with

XP and not the hardware.

You still have a lot of variables in the equation. You've got a BIOS to
consider, as well as how each OS accesses the drive and what it's doing once
it gets there. It's also possible the cable is bad...and floppy drives these
days are garbage. Almost all of them.

At this point I've come to the conclusion that 1)
XP support for FDD's was flawed to begin with, 2) one of the service packs
introduced broke FDD support, or 3) a security patch introduced a bug.

I've used floppies on XP quite a bit, on lots of nice and junk PCs, and it's
always worked well. That pretty much tells me floppies *can* work perfectly
under XP. I think Anna's experience is interesting...apparently XP expects
properly-working drives, where previous OS's didn't care if the drive was
bad. I betcha the fact that it works in another machine is an illusion...at
some point data could be lost and you'll know why.

I've tried all the usual steps to get the floppy to work under XP,
uninstall-reinstall, performing a repair install of XP, clearing CMOS all
without any success. Any other suggestions on what to try?

1. Get a new floppy cable.

2. Get a different floppy drive brand (an older one) and test again.

3. Try the same tests with the same OS and a different mobo.

After that, you can blame (or not) the OS.

-John O