Floppy drive

[Patricia]

I need help trying to figure out what is wrong with this
thing. It is driving me nuts. Everytime I put a
diskette in the drive it prompts "needs to be formatted"
I have tried to do that then it prompts "cannot be
formatted". Then I put in one that already has files on
it and it prompts the same message. I can use the disks
on other computers without problems. I have gone through
the whole troubleshooting spill and nothing. No messages
telling me that there is any problem with the device.
Any ideas?

Thanks!
Patricia

[E.P. van Westendorp]

Does this also happen with floppies you have reformatted yourself in any
flavour of MicroSoft Windows or MicroSoft Dos?
There is an issue with preformatted floppies where the disk manufacturer
failed to write the "Media Descriptor Byte" to the disk.
Older versions of Windows (except NT) didn't check the presence of this
byte but Windows XP does.

--

Eric P. van Westendorp Tel: +31(0252)210579
Reigerslaan 22 2215NN Voorhout Netherlands

Patricia wrote:
> I need help trying to figure out what is wrong with this
> thing. It is driving me nuts. Everytime I put a
> diskette in the drive it prompts "needs to be formatted"
> I have tried to do that then it prompts "cannot be
> formatted". Then I put in one that already has files on
> it and it prompts the same message. I can use the disks
> on other computers without problems. I have gone through
> the whole troubleshooting spill and nothing. No messages
> telling me that there is any problem with the device.
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
> Patricia