Isn't there software to "brute-force" format a floppy so that even if Windows tells you that it is no longer useable it can attempt to forcibly format the floppy until hopefully you can refuse the floppy, and if not, throw it away? I used one in Windows ME, but not sure if they have ones for NT. I have weird problems with floppies. They can work nicely in one drive, then another PC with Windows but a different Manufacturer or Model it can go nuts saying the floppy isn't formatted. Are some floppy drives just really cheap? Live by God, and by God only.

Some floppy drives sre better quality than others and most eventually poop out. Try cleaning the drive then formatting a couple know-good floppies. M2

SCRUB A diskette drive cleaning utility http://esca.atomki.hu/paradise/simtel/msdos/bootutil.html http://ftp.man.poznan.pl/pub/simtelnet/msdos/bootutil/ http://www.ping.de/sites/systemcoder/mixedstu.htm Program to clean floppy diskette drive heads. Used in conjunction with any liquid floppy cleaning kit. Waves the disk heads over the entire diskette cleaning surface for 40 seconds. ================================ Disktest http://www.simtel.net/product.php?url_fb_product_page=55167 http://www.simtel.net/product.download.mirrors.php?id=55167 Disktest PRO is a Windows 9x/NT/XP (32Bits) program to analyze, repair or modify 3.5" Double Sided High Density floppy disks on first floppy drive (A:). You can test floppy disks, search for bad sectors, repair bad sectors, format, quick format, recover data on bad sectors, make backups, mark/unmark bad sectors, erase data without using files, test floppy disk speed on reading. Data, when recovered, is 100% reliable. More than 3 pass testing is made to recover bad sectors. You can also format individual parts of the disk even with bad sectors on system area. All tasks can be viewed in an interface that lets the user see what is going on and where on the disk. All disk sectors are visible but more views are available. Source can be obtained.

Johnw, kewl M2

SmartFormat is the best that I've used.. its fairly old but still works. http://members.tripod.com/ieeecrce/innovations99/tformat/