Re: CAN'T FORMAT FLOPPY DISKS

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark V
  • Start date Start date
M

Mark V

Tim Price wrote in
Running WIN2K SP4.

All attempts to format floppy disks, fail. When
format a:
is entered at the Command Prompt, the following message is
returned:

FORMAT is not available for FAT drives.

When attempting to format from Windows Explorer, the
following Message Box is generated:

Windows was unable to complete the format.

Quick versus Full format yields the same result. The
FORMAT command used to function normally but I can't say
for sure at what SP level the problem started.
Click to expand...

Have you eliminated a batch of bad diskettes? Dirty drive? Failed
floppy drive? Loose FDD cabling? Swapped the drive for a known-good
one?
These are the usual suspects.

Can you format a diskette from another operating system?
 
-----Original Message-----
Tim Price wrote in news:062d01c3564c$5a8a9280 [email protected]:

Have you eliminated a batch of bad diskettes? Dirty drive? Failed
floppy drive? Loose FDD cabling? Swapped the drive for a known-good
one?
These are the usual suspects.

Can you format a diskette from another operating system?


.
Click to expand...
The hardware has been thoroughly checked out, as have the
diskettes. I can read and write to any and all diskettes,
only the format command fails. If I boot up from a floppy
disk to any version of DOS, the format command works
exactly as it should. This is a WIN2K software problem,
probably related to SP4. I was just wondering if anyone
else had experienced the problem. I wouldn't particularly
care except that I am unable to create a Norton GHOST 2003
boot diskette because the Norton software won't properly
create the boot diskette without first formatting the
diskette.
 
Tim Price wrote in
The hardware has been thoroughly checked out, as have the
diskettes. I can read and write to any and all diskettes,
only the format command fails. If I boot up from a floppy
disk to any version of DOS, the format command works
exactly as it should. This is a WIN2K software problem,
probably related to SP4. I was just wondering if anyone
else had experienced the problem. I wouldn't particularly
care except that I am unable to create a Norton GHOST 2003
boot diskette because the Norton software won't properly
create the boot diskette without first formatting the
diskette.
Click to expand...
Got it now. I've not seen this but if you want to try it (after
backups) perhaps removing the FDD via Device Manager and rebooting
might help.. Thin, but possibly worth trying. No SP4 here as yet.

Assume no EventLog messages on this situation (with detail).

Any A-V or other running that might be locking-out writes to the FD
boot sectors?

No other ideas at the moment.
 
If you have a compaq computer, some of the floppy drives are corrupted. They
released a patch for the problem, but it is very hard to find it on the
compaq web site.
 
Back
Top