The Problem: When I installed Windows 2000 Pro my floppy drive stopped working correctly. Since the install I always get an error when trying to Read/Write to a floppy. The Info: - I installed Win2k with SP2, and have downloaded and updated everything from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ - I have Norton SystemWorks 2001 installed, but have disabled the “Scan Floppies for boot viruses, on access / when shutting down Windows.” - On one computer I did a fresh format and then installed Win2k, on another I upgraded from Win98SE. Both have the same problem. - It is not the floppy ribbon, drive or the media. They all worked great before the install. - I did install Win2k with the NTFS file format. - The computer with a fresh format is a older CTX-P2 350 - The computer that was upgraded is a new custom job. It has an Asus A7A266 Motherboard, and a new MITSUMI floppy drive in it. - I’ve tried uninstalling the drive from Hardware manager in Win2k but the problem was still there after Win2k detected the drive and reinstalled the drivers. The Error’s: In Windows Explorer “The disk in drive A is not formatted” I click yes to format the disk “Windows was unable to complete the format” “The disk in drive A cannot be formatted” In Command Prompt I type format a: “Invalid media or Track 0 bad – disk unusable.” On start up With a System disk, Win98SE boot disk, in drive “Disk I/O Error” Any help with this problem would be much appreciated. I’ve tried everything that I can think of, it’s driving me nuts! Thank you, Mike

Greets Mike, Sounds to me, even in view of your evidence, that the floppy took a dump. Or maybe on the outside chance the floppy drive is not compatible with W2K, I Doubt it. Try a new floppy drive, they're like 9 bucks. I myself have been trough 15 in my 10 station network in the past couple years. Floppy is such a basic drive, I can't believe its a driver or W2K issue :) Hope this helps Brian

It seems too coincidental that two floppy drives would bite the dust at the same time. I suggest looking at something common to both installs...something like the Norton software or some other application or what have you that is also common to both your installations. Try removing anything such as that and see if the floppies come to life. Certainly W2K can handle floppy drives. Did you use the same W2K media to install both systems? I ask, because I guess that would also create the possiblity there's some kind of media corruption...but this seems quite a remote possibility. You might also try disabling any Virus software that is common to both machines. -MW

Thank you both for your replies! I bit the bullet today and bought a new floppy drive for one of the machines. The new drive has the same errors as the other two. I can not boot from it or use it in Win2k. I also bought some new floppy disks, those did not help either. I did install Win2k on both machines with the same CD. So there is a possibility that the media is bad. I will try to get my hands on another copy from somewhere. The only other similarity between the two installs is that they both use the NTFS format. On the second machine I installed Win2k to see if I would have a problem with the floppy there also. After Win2k was installed I immediately tested the drive and got the same errors. Right now I am reformatting the second PC and will try installing with the FAT file format. Hopefully that will fix the problem, later I can try converting from FAT to NTFS. Another thought hit me, would a IRQ conflict be causing this problem? I don’t see any warning signs in the System’s Device Manager so I’ve assumed that there were no IRQ problems. Can Win2k share an IRQ with the floppy drive and a sound/other card?

The problem was fixed by little gnomes! If I wasn't so happy I'd be pissed. :D Since my floppy drives wouldn’t work I had to find another way to boot up and use fdisk. Thinking that a bootable CD was to much work, I tried creating a set of Win2k setup disks on my FIRST computer. Much to my surprise four Win2k Setup Disks came out of the process. To see if they worked I restarted my SECOND computer with Boot Disk #1 in the drive. The SECOND computer took the disk, without error, and started booting off of it. I quickly Ctrl-Alt-Deleted in the middle of the boot and let Win2k boot up without the Setup Disks. After the SECOND computer finished booting I stuck a floppy in the drive and got the same errors that I have been getting all along. I then went back to the FIRST computer and attempted to look at the setup floppies, that I had just created, with Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer listed all of the files on drive A: without error. I then tried it on several different disks both old and new and all worked without error. AFAIK everything is working fine. Back to the SECOND computer. I started to created Win2k Setup Disks but stopped the process after the #1 disk was completed. I went into Windows Explorer and was still not able to work the drive (I would get the same errors as before). So I started to create the setup disks again, but let the process finish this time. After creating the setup disks on the SECOND computer, I tried to examine my Win98se boot disk with Windows Explorer. I got an error with this disk, so I switch the floppy with Win2k boot disk #1 that I had just created. I was able to examine the Win2k boot disk #1 without error. After that I was able try several different disks, including the Win98se boot disk, and all worked without error. AFAIK everything works fine now. That is the process that just happened to fix my floppy drive problem. Yet another PC fix without me knowing what the heck happened. I tried to describe the process in detail incase someone would know what happened. Thank you for your help, Mike

I've got the same problem but is with the Win98se. All I have on my HD is just the OS, MS Office and Corel Draw 9. Recently, I've completely replaced my old HD with a new one and used a Win95 boot disk to start all the installation. After all had been done, floppy started to experience the same problem as you did. I would be grateful if you could tell me exactly what you'd done to solve the problem (but all I have is just a single computer, not as many as you have :)) Thanks man.

I have the same issue. Would Your machine happen to be a Dell? Just wondering. But,...If you aren't booting from the disk then that shows that the windows driver is not it because windows drivers aren't even loaded if you are using an image on your Floppy :) Try Getting New Dell Driver Z: Disk Driver, it loads the floppy driver on the Z: disk, which is apprehended to the motherboard, I had the same issue on over 20 of my machines, New Driver worked :) Jerrod