So one day my xp machine decides that is not going to read floppy disks. I got the message 'The disk in drive a is not formatted' If i tried to formatted it would fail. Also one of my hard drives, with a fat32 file system, gave my the same error. On top of that, my usb digital camera acts as a removable disc and when trying to acces that I get the same message. I tried the floppies on another computer and the camera and they both work. i can also read my fat32 hard disk when I boot with the xp cd and use the recovery console. This ones just got me stumped.

So this just happened one day? Did you make any changes around that time to either hardware or software?

I see issues ranging from a virus to Mobo problems.

Have you done a virus scan? Do you run an AV? Saw one suggestion to shutdown the AV while trying to access disk. Also saw try the drives in Safe Mode.

Since this affects mulitple devices I would lean towards a virus or Mobo problem. Have you checked your Device Manager for issues?

Also maybe download Everest to check the status of your board:

EVEREST Home Edition

Here are some other snippits I ran across:

"4) Floppy "Disk Not Formatted" In XP

Robert writes - I have a machine running XP. When I place a 3.5 floppy disk in the drive , it comes back with "Disk is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?" I used another disk, same problem but I upgraded the bios on the system with the 3.5. Also, I switch drives and came up with the same problem. Any help.


*** Some folks report that turning off your anti-virus program has solved that particular error. Also try a brand new disk as most folks dont realize that floppy media often goes bad due to age and dirt. And, if you haven't used that drive in ages it may require cleaning. Kits cost about $3.

And, if you put a good disk in a dirty drive it probably has already ruined the disk. eg the disk acted like a dirt gatherer. If you put a dirty disk in a new floppy drive it can then muck up the heads on the new drive as well.

I work on the road, and have to carry doubles of my most important floppies due to dirty drives. I tend to toss lots of "perfectly working before" disks into the trash after putting them into customers PCs where they haven't used their drive in ages.

Or, you may be using a USB floppy drive and a hub. If so, try connecting the USB drive directly to the PC.

Or, and this may well be the _REAL_ issue, is that XP often simply doesn't like floppy disks that have been formatted on a non-XP PC.

In other words, you may find that your disks are fine and can be read on win9X PCs but not on XP. Since you have to get your data over, you may be forced to use another PC to copy the data to a zip, etc. drive and then copy it to the XP PC. Chances are, if you have a brand new floppy disk, and format it with XP, it will work in XP.

Or try formatting a new disk in XP, then see if it works on the 98 PC, then copy the data to it on the 98 PC. "

"You might have a problem with the floppy drive controller on your
motherboard. Here is how to find out:

1. On some other PC, download and create a Win98 boot disk from
www.bootdisk.com.
2. Boot your problem PC with this disk.
3. Check if you can see the various files & folders on this disk.
4. Have another floppy disk ready, then type this command: format b:

If Steps 2, 3 and 4 above work then you have a Win2000 problem. If any one
of them fails then you have a hardware problem."

"Does this occur in safe mode?
It sounds like there may be an issue with filter drivers from cdburning
software."

"This a symptom of the Blaster worm IIRC."

disk not formatted error

Just suddenly. Both virus and Spyware scans come up negative. I susspect maybee missing files but I wouldn't know how to look. Chkdsk on the boot drive comes up clean. No problems in the device editor, and it would be hard to pin it to a hardware problem since it's effecting several devices. I was thinking that it might just be related to fat32 partitions. Again, just don't know where to look.

So no new hardware or software that could have triggered this?

Did you try Safe Mode?

Have you considered Repairing XP?

Repair XP