cannot access a: drive

[donna]

I just bought a pc and have installed XP. When trying to
access my A: drive it says disk not formatted, I dont want
to format just read it. When I open word and file open
select A: it says, you are not the administrator of this
machine. How do I get to be the administrator and access
the A: drive.

[Ron Goltsch]

Donna,
My experience with a floppy not being read with the message that
the disk is not formatted usually means the floppy has bad sector or some
type of damage. I would verify this by putting in another disk (Preferably
a disk that doesn't contain anything important, just in case the drive is
eating disks) and see if that disk can be read. If it can be read, the
issue is with the disk, not the drive.

To attempt to fix a bad floppy, follow this procedure:

Go to My computer, and right click on the A drive
Choose Properties from the choices presented
Click on the Tab, "Tools"
Click on the "Check Now" button for Error Checking
The drive will access the suspect floppy and see if it can repair the disk.
If it can, you should now be able to read the disk.

My father-in-law had a similar problem to you, except he followed my steps
above and the second disk could not be read either. He went and bought a
new floppy drive, only to have that one not be able to read the disks
either. It turned out he had three different disks that were bad laying on
his desk the day he tested his drive.

My advice would be (if you find the floppy disk to be damaged and manage to
get it repaired) to remove all the data from that floppy and transfer it to
a new disk. The floppy is now suspect. They are inexpensive enough to
destroy and use another disk. What's more expensive, a $0.25 disk or an
hour re-typing your term paper?

--

Ron Goltsch
Associate Expert
Expert Zone - www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone

PS If you still have issues and need info on the types of users on a
machine, let me know.

"donna" > wrote in message
...
> I just bought a pc and have installed XP. When trying to
> access my A: drive it says disk not formatted, I dont want
> to format just read it. When I open word and file open
> select A: it says, you are not the administrator of this
> machine. How do I get to be the administrator and access
> the A: drive.