is there a way to open a 31/2 floppy disk using a usb reader. operating system is windows xp. and floppy was probabaly 95 or 98. but it comes up with just jibberish and a few words here and there when it does open

To read a floppy disk you need a floppy drive. I've never seen a card reader with a floppy drive but if one exists then yes, you could use it as long as the PC saw it as a floppy drive. If you mean an external floppy drive, yes that would work too. If it's just showing gibberish then it's either corrupted or has a non-traditional format. Is it a 720 K or 1.4 meg disk?

your right, its a external drive, called a smartdisk. the disk im guessing is a 720. it will open the xcel and the word files. but not the one called COMP. WK4 so i don't know what program created it. and when you go to net to find what to open it with, it gives you programs that want to fix the computer not the disk. like mighty max was one

A .WK4 file is evidently a Lotus file: http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/wk4

If it's got a file on it then the disk is probably OK. The .wk4 extension looks to be a lotus file: http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/wk4 As far as 720K or 1.4 meg disk: The 1.4 disks have a square opening in the bottom left and right of the disk. The one on the right is for the 1.4 sensor in a 1.4 drive. The one on the left has a slide cover and is used to set the disk as read-only. The 720K disk will not have the opening for the 1.4 sensor.

well it must be the 1.4 then. but my computer keeps freezing when i try to open it. i did go to the site that you gave me, but don't know what to do when i get there.

The site just gives info on the software that uses the wk4 extension. In order to use the file you'd need to install Lotus or perhaps a file converter that would allow you to use it with Office or something similar. Here's a google search that may help: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...