Need Super Geeks...

Valis

Ok...my campus computer lab has all machines running Win2k Sp4...All new Dell P4's. Well I've got the problem where it isn't reading many floppy drives formatted in Me, Win 9X...This is causing a huge problem because Win2k isn't reading the media descriptor or the floppy doesn't have one and then it proceeds to ask the student if they want to format the disk. You could see how this might be deleterious to the undereducated computer user and all the yes clicks that might happen. Goodbye midterm English paper! The other thing is that the floppies are readable on other 9X machines so it aint the hardware, unless it is a mix of BIOS and Win2K issue. So I know about this, but I have seen mixed instances from other boards where this doesn't work...I also know about the possible BIOS update and disabling everything at startup using msconfig, but I was wondering if any of my super geeks had a definitive solution to this problem. I am inclined to think this is one bug Microsoft isn't going to fix so they can phase out floppy technology altogether. Blerg!

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;811839

Sincerely,

District Overbeer

onacruse

I'm tempted to delete the above post as a violation of rule #8.

xenawarrior

LMAO @ the advertising attached !!

Silly Monkey Hats?
Why, yes! That is a monkey hat. Thank you for noticing. Only $8.75.

dustyb

the problem is the way the floppy is formatted in. its FAT formatted, and sometimes if you don't have a FAT partition on win2k w/ sp4 (w2k is NTFS) it won't read. try formatting to just fat16 on your floppy disc, or else get a disc for NTFS systems. it sux

Valis

dusty...I don't think that is the problem. Especially since the floppies work on other OS's..even XP, which also has such problems oddly enough..

Sincerely,

District Overbeer

gumby

Gumby

Valis

if pr_capone is out there can you kindly ask the folks at amdcoop for me? I can't remember my account info...*LOL*

Sincerely,

District Overbeer

drwtsn32

the problem is the way the floppy is formatted in. its FAT formatted, and sometimes if you don't have a FAT partition on win2k w/ sp4 (w2k is NTFS) it won't read. try formatting to just fat16 on your floppy disc, or else get a disc for NTFS systems. it sux

No...that's definitely not it. Floppies are always formatted FAT12 (not even FAT16). You cannot, without significant work, format a floppy disk with NTFS. It doesn't matter what format your hard drives are using; Win2K/XP can read FAT12/16/32 and NTFS disks without problems. Typically the problem Valis is describing sounds like a floppy alignment difference between the two computers. But it's puzzling that it is happening with disks formatted by many different Win9x/Me computers when you try and read them on the many computers in the lab. I doubt it's a BIOS issue or even a bug in Windows.

ambush23

the problem is simply the user

drwtsn32

Aren't all problems, ambush? lol!

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