Formating a Floppy with XP

[Burnt Powder]

What a pain in the neck. I just put together a system for my friend mother (where his old parts after he upgraded) and I put XP Pro on it and th elast thing I checked before I was about to take it to her was if the CDROM and Floppy drives worked. The CDROM had no issues but the floppy can read and write but NOT format. When i attempt to format a floppy, I get one of these two messages:

- Windows was unable to complete the format

- Windows cannot format this drive. Quit any disk utilities or other programs that are using this drive, and make sure that no window is displaying the contents of the drive. Then try formatting again

Here is the strange thing. I have tried at least 3 floppies in my 2K system first before I tried them in her system and they all formated great. I take those same three to her system and I get those messages. Then if I take them back to my 2K system (or even try them in her XP rig for that matter), it will not even read them and cannot format them and I get the message:

- This disk is not formated, would you like to format now?

and of course I say yes but nothing. I have never seen anything like this. I have searched a little on it and see that others are having the same problem but no solutions have been given.

Any help or ideas?

[Shinma]

Presuming that you have already double checked the floppy drive settings in the CMOS,

Floppy drive in your friends' system may be defective and damaging your floppies as well.
Test with your floppy drive in your friends' system.

[Burnt Powder]

Originally posted by Shinma
Presuming that you have already double checked the floppy drive settings in the CMOS,

Floppy drive in your friends' system may be defective and damaging your floppies as well.
Test with your floppy drive in your friends' system.

Thought of or tried all three prior to posting originally

[Shinma]

Since you stated that the floppy drive in question has been verified to be in working order,
I would guess that at least the FORMAT in WindowsXP is corrupted or such...

You could try the following:

Use REGEDIT,
Locate:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E980-E32511CE-BFC1-08002BE10318},
Delete the UpperFilters (and LowerFilters if any),

Restart system.

[Burnt Powder]

I will give that a shot Shinma. You know what is REALLY odd. Later on this evening after I made that post about my buddies mothers system, my buddies wife called me and said that there new system was doing the same damn thing.

I really hope what you said fixes the problem. I will let you know.

***UPDATED***

Just look for them at that location with regedit and found neither of them so there was nothing there to delete. (UpperFilters or LowerFilters).

[Shinma]

Originally posted by Burnt Powder
... my buddies wife called me and said that there new system was doing the same damn thing...

Not a good sign.
They do run an up to date virus scanner, I hope?

[Burnt Powder]

Originally posted by Shinma



Not a good sign.
They do run an up to date virus scanner, I hope?

Yes they run NAV 2003 Professional. But anyway, there is something good to report. I got the floppy working in his mothers system. I did not really do anything special except disconnect and reconnect the cables from the back of the floppy (they were correct and seated properly to begin with and I did this twice before) and now it works without any hitches. I hope that his is as easy as his mothers was to fix

[Shinma]

Good luck.