System halt when copying a file to the floppy drive

[Zoinkity]

This is a weird one. The floppy drive works fine under DOS. In windows, you can copy from the drive to a hard disk, open files, create them, etc., but the system hangs (no BSOD) whenever a file is moved to the floppy drive using the copy, move, sendto, or drag-and-drop features. It must be some kind of software issue, but not sure how to fix it.

Any ideas what's causing this?

Edited May 3, 2008 by Zoinkity

[dandnsmith]

If it works well in DOS - is this booting into DOS, or running a DOS window?

As a place to start, how about looking to see if the floppy drivers are corrupt, or could there be something in the registry which is messing things up.

After some of the troubles seen with CDs, how about checking what happens when you list a floppy content, change the floppy and then list the content again - any change?

[jaclaz]

Most probably NOT connected to the report by Zoinkity but generally speaking, Win9x does "weird" things to floppies, see here:

http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/WIN98FDB.htm

http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/debug/debug2.htm#IHC

Could it be a problem with the floppy driver or corrupted VMM32.VXD?

http://drscriptt.riverviewtech.net/docs/vmm32.html

@Zoinkity

What happens in a DOS box within Windows 98?

jaclaz

[ShadeTreeLee]

In my experience, Windows support for the floppy drive is crap. Especially a Windows format of the floppy which is almost a patented guarantee that the floppy will become totally unusable at the first attempt to do so under Windows. OK, I might be pulling it a little there, make it three uses under Windows.

BUT you take the same "ruined" floppy and then format it in true, "boot to" DOS mode and then it's good to go for any true DOS mode work forevermore or about three file transfers using Windows. And then it starts up all over again. I have no idea which Windows "driver" it is that just doesn't get the job done right but the problem is real and it exists right on up through XP. I expect it really started with Win95 but I've never attempted to "prove" that assumption at all. I'd really love it if someone would fix that driver.

I do extensive floppy file transfers using 5.25 disks mainly but have noticed the same problem with 3.5 floppies as well. I came to this conclusion back in 1999 when I first started moving files I gather on the Internet over to my Atari 8 bit that is using a hard drive so I also have to deal with cross platform transfers on top of the Windows floppy problems. I absolutely require perfect floppy formats and Windows just can't deliver.

[Zoinkity]

Okay, first, there are no problems reading or any when bringing up properties. As far as writing, I can use pure DOS, a DOS window, or directly saving to the floppy (ie. Save As... to a:\ from a program). The trouble occurs if I try to copy or move a file to the floppy from explorer. Floppy drivers don't appear corrupt.

After doing a little testing (and getting a rewritable CD), it turns out that copy/move/sendto doesn't work for any removable drive, be it 5.25, 3.5, or CD - but only when writting to the disk. However, the same operations work fine between the hard drives, so maybe it is something driver-related. This is really quite odd since it suddenly, out of the blue stopped working properly after years of being completely fine.

Hmm... Never had that problem with 5.25 floppies. I've been sending stuff to an Atari 800XL (using an external floppy drive, obviously) for years now. It's certainly much more stable than the audio cassette drives ever were...

Edited May 6, 2008 by Zoinkity