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#31
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Cannot open floopy disk in Word
Morettina wrote:
My parents are also encountering problems opening Word files on a new Vista PC. These files were saved on a Windows 98 PC onto floppies using Word. What is strange though is that even in the Vista Windows Explorer, the files don't even show up! If they put the floppy in the Win98 PC, the files they've saved on the Vista PC don't show up, and vice versa. I have to say that they (and me too) have often saved files to floppy as a backup (or to take on the road) from inside Word and never had problems with them. I guess we've been lucky. But what I'm stumped with is that Vista doesn't seem to even see the files that were saved on the Win98 PC. Is there something different between the 2 operating systems that is causing this? Marie I don't have Vista myself but Windows XP has the same problems. Apart from loose cables, defective floppy drives or misaligned floppy disks which are sure reasons to fail there maybe reasons by changes in XP and Vista. Firstly every floppy should have an ID byte (like F0 or F9) in the bootsector. This ID byte depends on the floppy size, it is F0 for an 1.44MB floppy. Not every program that formats floppies did enter the by XP and Vista now required ID byte that was ignored by Windows 98. This was especially many times the case with the commercially preformatted floppies many people bought in the past. Secondly the floppy driver inside Windows XP and Vista was redesigned to not accept all old floppy sizes for writing or sometimes also reading. Info from the MicroSoft Knowledge Base Article ID : 309623 Windows XP supports the following floppy disk formats: • 1.44 megabyte (MB) 3.5" floppy disk (read, write, format) • 720 kilobyte (KB) 3.5" floppy disk (read, write only) • 1.2MB 5.25" floppy disk (read, write, format) • 360KB 5.25" floppy disk (read, write, format) Article ID : 140060 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 Best is to try the floppy in a computer using Windows 98. If the floppy is readable transfer the data to a medium that works in Vista like an in Windows Vista formatted floppy or memory stick that also works in 98(SE?). |
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