When A Floppy Drive Doesn’t Work, Using Windows 9x To Manage A Floppy Drive, Emergency Startup Disks, Windows 95 Startup Disk

When A Floppy Drive Doesn’t Work

Since floppy drives are so inexpensive, it’s best to simply replace the broken one. Once you’ve determined that the drive has a problem, simply open the case, remove the problem drive, and replace it with a new one. This procedure should take no more than 30 minutes.

Using Windows 9x To Manage A Floppy Drive

Windows 9x performs similar functions to those available with DOS and Windows 3.x. A few are covered here.

Format a Disk and Make a System Disk Using Windows 9x

To format a floppy disk, follow these steps:

1. Click the Start button on the Taskbar, point to Programs, and then click Windows Explorer. Right-click either Drive A or Drive B. The menu shown below appears.

2. Click Format on the menu. The Format dialog box shown below opens. Notice that you have three format options: Quick format (does not re-mark the tracks), Full format, or an option to copy just the system files to the disk (same as DOS SYS command).

3. Select the appropriate options to either format the disk or make the disk bootable.

Copy Disk Command Using Windows 9x

If you select the Copy Disk command from the 3½ Floppy (A) shortcut menu, a dialog box opens, as shown below, where the disk listed in the Copy from section is the source disk, and the disk listed in the Copy to section is the target disk. Click Start to copy the disk.

Emergency Startup Disks

Although you normally boot from a hard drive, problems with the hard drive sometimes make it necessary to boot from a floppy disk. Always have a bootable disk called a rescue disk available for this purpose. For DOS, you must create your own disk, making sure it includes the necessary system files and any utilities (such as AUTOEXEC.BAT, EDIT.COM, and FDISK.EXE) that you might need in an emergency.

Beginning with Windows 95, the operating system provided an automated method to create a system disk with useful utility programs on it. This rescue disk is called an Emergency Startup Disk (ESD) and is created under the Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs group. Files that Windows 95 and Windows 98 puts on an emergency startup disk are listed in the tables below.

Windows 95 Startup Disk

When you create a Windows 95 emergency startup disk (rescue disk), the disk is

formatted and system files are copied to the disk, just as when you make a bootable

system disk.

To create the disk, click Start, select Settings, and then click Control Panel. In

the Control Panel, double-click Add/Remove Programs. When the Add/Remove

Program Properties window appears, click the Startup Disk tab and then click

Create Disk.