Win98 A:Drive files unreadable in WinXP?

[trsmystic]

Is there a way to recover files that are written to 3.5 floppies using Win 98SE and MS Office 97 Word? My son has an IBM Thinkpad 760XL with the above software. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a printer. When he came to my house to print the files, my pc said the disk is unrecognizable and needs to be formatted. I have a Dell Dimension desktop using Win XP and MS Office 2003. Any suggestions or help is appreciated.

(My printer works off USB connection only so we couldn't go that route since the Thinkpad has only serial and parallel port connections.)

[rjfvillarosa]

XP should be able to see the files maybe it's Office that is having the problem?
If both machines have LAN connections then it might be possible to network them and then maybe the laptop can access the printer in that way, the only problem I can see would be the age of the printer, if it is very new 98SE may not see it and there may not be drivers available.

[TwoRails]

As rjfvillarosa mentions, XP should not have any problem reading the disk, as the format is the same. It could be one of the A drives is having problems. Double check the disk in the 98 box, and make a floppy in the XP box and see if the 98 box can read it.

[LittleGhoti]

This is a common problem on Windows NT/2K/XP systems. It stems from the fact that the Windows NT family is pickier about the diskette format than Win 9x. Part of the format is a single byte in the disk's boot sector, called the "Media Descriptor Byte" (MDB), which identifies what type of disk it is. If the MDB contains an incorrect value (as is the case with some preformatted diskettes), Windows NT will refuse to access it, behaving as if the disk is not formatted at all. Windows 9x/ME ignores the MDB, so it will use such diskettes without any problems.

There are two possible fixes.

The first is to reformat the diskette manually before using it to store files (which only has to be done once for any given diskette). Fortunately, Win 9x sets the MDB correctly when it formats a disk, so it doesn't matter whether you do this at home or your son does it on the school computer.

If you use Explorer to format the disk (e.g., by right-clicking the A: drive icon and choosing Format... from the menu):

* Under Win 9x, be sure to select the Full option.
* Under Win XP, make sure that the Quick Format box is not checked.

If you use the FORMAT command from the command prompt, be sure to specify the "/U" switch, as in:

FORMAT A: /U

The second is to use the DEBUG utility to repair the boot record, providing the correct value for the MDB. This will allow XP to access the diskette without affecting any files it contains. The only problem is that I'm not sure if XP Home includes the DEBUG command (XP Pro does). At any rate, here's the procedure, which can be performed on any Windows (or DOS) system that has the DEBUG command available:

* Put the diskette in the floppy drive.
* Open a Command Prompt window (Start | All Programs | Accessories | Command Prompt).
* At the command prompt, type in "DEBUG" (without the quotes) and press Enter. If you get an error message (e.g., "DEBUG is not recognized..."), you won't be able to fix the diskette on your system because the DEBUG utility is not present.
* If DEBUG is present, you'll get its input prompt, which is a single hyphen. At the hyphen prompt, type the following commands EXACTLY as they appear here (including any spaces!), pressing Enter after each line. (Note that if it looks like a zero, it is a zero, not the letter "O".):

L 100 0 0 1
E 115 F0
W 100 0 0 1
Q

*
After typing "Q" and pressing Enter, you will return to the command prompt. Type EXIT and press Enter to close the Command Prompt window.
*
As you do the above, it will look something like this on the screen (your command prompt will probably be different -- the stuff you type is in boldface for clarity). Note that when you issue the "L" (Load) and "W" (Write) commands, there will be a slight delay before the hyphen prompt returns, as DEBUG reads from/writes to the floppy:

L:\WINXP>DEBUG
-L 100 0 0 1
-E 115 F0
-W 100 0 0 1
-Q

L:\WINXP>EXIT

* Remove and reinsert the floppy disk, and you should now be able to access its contents.

Again, this only has to be done once to any given diskette. Once the boot record has been fixed, it will stay fixed. Normal file writes/reads/deletes will not affect it. If you decide to reformat the diskette again, any version of Windows (or DOS) will put the correct value in the MDB.

[clroberts]

That's cool.. I did not know that command existed.. Thanks for the information LittleGhoti!

[trsmystic]

LittleGhoti:
Thanks for this bit of info, I was unaware of this glitch with XP. I will give this a try tomorrow and let you know how things turn out.