• How To Read Floppy Disk With Vista
• How To Read Floppy Disk With Vista Catalina
• How To Read Floppy Disk With Vista Usb

Bad floppy or error with diskette

This issue is most often caused by a bad floppy diskette. Try alternate floppy diskettes in the computer. If other diskettes can be read in the computer is likely a bad diskette.

If the diskette contains valuable information or information that is only able to be found on this diskette, try reading the diskette in another computer. If the diskette works in the computer, there may still be errors on the diskette. We recommend you copy the contents of the diskette to your hard drive as a backup, and try using an alternate floppy diskette to transfer the information.

A boot disk (or a startup disk) is a recovery media (CD, DVD or floppy disk for older Windows versions) that you can use to start Windows, if it became damaged or corrupted somehow. The term “boot disk” was mostly used in connection with Windows XP (and older versions) and, in some cases, with Windows Vista. PowerISO shows Make floppy disk image file dialog. Choose the floppy driver which holds the disc you want to copy, and enter the output file path name. Click 'OK' to start making floppy disk image file. After the operation completes successfully, you can open the floppy image file with PowerISO to browse or view files in the image file. From inside Vista do a full format of a floppy disk, this is necessary to set the boot sector of the floppy to look for the Vista boot file, (don't create MS-DOS startup disk). Copy just the bootmgr and BCD files from the root of Vista onto the floppy.

How To Read Floppy Disk With Vista

Bad floppy diskette drive

It would use floppies if the computer that had vista took floppies. It would be a 3.5 inch slot on your machine that a floppy disc would fit into. If you dont have this slot then you cant take a floppy. You can buy an external floppy that hooks up USB. Either way the answer is yes. Vista will support a floppy disc. There ARE still two computers running Windows Vista, so yes - the floppy disk contents can be copied to usb flashdrives (done as needed). There are far too many floppy disks here with files on them.

If no floppy diskette can be read in the computer, but other computers read the diskettes, run through floppy diskette drive troubleshooting.

Data recovery

If this information is valuable information that cannot be lost and is not stored anywhere else, you may want to consider a data recovery service for lost or deleted files.

Additional information

• See our floppy disk and floppy drive pages for further related information.

Symptoms

When you access a floppy disk, you may receive one of the following error messages:

-or-

Disk is not formatted
The disk in drive A is not formatted.
Do you want to format it now?

-or-

STOP: The disk media is not recognized, it may not be formatted.

The same disk may work correctly with MS-DOS or Windows 95, or after you re-format the disk with Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003.

Cause

How To Read Floppy Disk With Vista Catalina

This problem occurs on disks that do not contain a media descriptor byte in the BIOS parameter block (BPB) of the boot sector. Some older preformatted floppy disks do not contain a media descriptor byte. Older product disks may also not have the media descriptor byte.
The media descriptor indicates the type of medium currently in a drive. With MS-DOS and Windows 95, you do not have to set the media descriptor byte. Therefore this problem does not occur with these older operating systems.
The media descriptor byte is located in the BPB of the boot sector at offset 21 (15h) and in the first byte of each FAT on the disk.

Resolution

To resolve this problem, re-format the floppy disk with Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003.

Workaround

Warning: This workaround is for advanced users only. This workaround involves using a disk sector editor to modify the media descriptor byte on the floppy disk. Misuse of a disk sector editor may make all the data on the drive or volume permanently inaccessible. Disk sector editors function at a level 'below' the file system, so the typical checks for maintaining disk consistency do not apply. This provides you direct access to every byte on the physical disk regardless of access credentials. Therefore, you can damage or permanently overwrite critical on-disk data structures. Use this workaround at your own risk.
To work around this problem, use a disk sector editor to change the BPB media descriptor byte to the appropriate value. For example, you can use the DiskProbe tool to do this on a Windows NT 4.0-based, Windows 2000-based, Windows XP-based, or Windows Server 2003-based computer. DiskProbe (Dskprobe.exe) is included with the Windows Support Tools for Windows XP Professional and Windows XP 64-Bit Edition, the Windows 2000 Support Tools, and Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit Support Tools.
The following table lists the most common media descriptor bytes:
Byte Capacity Media Size and Type
-------------------------------------------------
F0 2.88 MB 3.5-inch, 2-sided, 36-sector
F0 1.44 MB 3.5-inch, 2-sided, 18-sector
F9 720K 3.5-inch, 2-sided, 9-sector
F9 1.2 MB 5.25-inch, 2-sided, 15-sector
FD 360K 5.25-inch, 2-sided, 9-sector
FF 320K 5.25-inch, 2-sided, 8-sector
FC 180K 5.25-inch, 1-sided, 9-sector
FE 160K 5.25-inch, 1-sided, 8-sector
FE 250K 8-inch, 1-sided, single-density
FD 500K 8-inch, 2-sided, single-density
FE 1.2 MB 8-inch, 2-sided, double-density
F8 ----- Hard disk
The BPB media descriptor byte is located in sector 0 of the disk, and looks similar to this:
addr data:
0000 EB 3C 90 4D 53 44 4F 53 35 2E 30 00 02 01 01 00
0010 02 E0 00 40 0B F0 09 00 12 00 02 00 00 00 00 00
xx <---- This byte above XX is the media descriptor
byte and is at offset hexadecimal 21 (15h).

More Information

For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

301423 HOW TO: Install the Windows 2000 Support Tools to a Windows 2000 Server-Based Computer

How To Read Floppy Disk With Vista Usb

306794 How to Install the Support Tools from the Windows XP CD-ROM

206848 Windows NT Service Pack 4.0 Tools Not Included on CD-ROM