Sony Storage Support

The problem may be related to the following:

• the floppy disks.
• the operating system being used to access the disks.
• the floppy drive that was used to format the disks.
• the floppy drive that is attempting to access the disks.

Step 1: Troubleshoot the floppy disks

• Ensure that the disks are not write-protected. A write-protected disk will allow the disk to be read, but not written to or formatted.
• Test with multiple disks from the same manufacturer, and also with multiple disks from different manufacturers. This will eliminate the possibility that there is a physical problem with a particular batch of disks from a given manufacturer or with the physical disk design associated with a particular disk manufacturer.
• Test with multiple blank, clean (non-infected), pre-formatted disks. This will eliminate the possibility that the problem is related to a formatting problem, or corrupt data or viruses contained on the disks.
• Test the disks on multiple systems. If the disks cannot be accessed normally on any system, they are probably defective.

Step 2: Test in DOS

• Boot the system having trouble with the disks to a working, bootable DOS-diskette, such as a Windows. 95/98 Startup diskette or a bootable-diagnostic diskette, and then test the problematic floppy disks in the DOS environment.
• If the disks can now be accessed or formatted normally, this indicates that the problem is related to a conflict between the system's installed operating system and, either, the formatting or the contents of the disks.
• Perform a long format of the disks in DOS; this can resolve some formatting or data corruption issues.

To test access to a floppy disk in DOS, perform the following steps:

1. Boot the system having trouble with the disks to a working, bootable DOS-diskette, such as a Windows 95/98 Startup diskette or a bootable-diagnostic diskette.
2. Insert the problematic floppy diskette into the floppy disk drive.
3. Ensure that an A:\> prompt with a blinking cursor appears as the last text on the screen. If not, type a: and then press the [Enter] key once.
4. At the A:\> prompt, type: dir, and then press [Enter].
5. If text similar to the following appears, the disk is being accessed properly.