Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit - Floppy drive driver issue

I have been running Windows 7 build 7100 since it was released to the
public to try out. It has been running without problems, so I bought,
and installed the just released final version. However, I have found
that I can't format floppy disks, with the newly installed OS.

At first I thought that my floppy drive had gone bad, but after having
replaced the drive, with a drive from my second PC, and another drive
that I have in stock :-) as well as a new cable, I have come to the
conclusion that the problem is related to the OS.

In order to try to find the reason for the issue, I did a clean
installation of both WinXP64 and Vista x64. The problem didn't occur
when those OS'es were installed.

I even did a clean install of build 7100, to see if the problem was
there when I had that version installed. I found that the issue was
there too, but that I apparently hadn't noticed it :-)

I know that floppy disks aren't used much these days, but I find a
bootable diskette useful if I want to make a Ghost image, flash a Bios,
or disks for adding "F6 drivers" when/if I install WinXP64 or Vista etc.

I would like to know if the issue is related to my system only, AMD
"Dragon" platform :-) or it's a common problem.

My system:

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Processor AMD Phenom II X4 940 BE
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H
RAM 2x2048 MB DDR2 SDRAM 1066 MHz OCZ
GFX Club 3D Radeon PCI-E HD4870 Extreme OC 1GB
Hard-Disk WD Caviar Black WD1001FALS
Sony Floppy drive 1.44MB
PSU Thermaltake Toughpower 750W

I have Win-7 Enterprise x64 and Professional x64 running without a
floppy drives installed so for testing I had to use a USB floppy. Both
systems are RTM not beta and format floppies without problems. One thing
that I noticed that when formatting a floppy there was about a 15-20 delay
from the format request and getting the format window, possibly caused by
the USB floppy drive. What you may try is go into Device Manager delete the
floppy controller and click delete files, reboot the system to reinstall the
controller. Or another possibility is a stunt that I've done inadvertently
when installing the floppy drive is reverse the cable so that pin 1 isn't
aligned on the MB & floppy drive, but you said that the drive works on
different operating systems so that shouldn't be the problem. Have a great
day.

You are not alone.
I started having issues with floppy drives ever since I switched to AMD
motherboards. First a 790FX one and now a 770.
Couldn't figure out the root cause and I also swapped drives and cables.
I finally gave up and removed the floppy drive for good.
All I use now is an MS-DOS USB pen drive that comes in handy for BIOS
flashing and putting "F6" drivers.
Please note that neither Vista nor Win 7 need floppies any more for the F6
thing.

Good question. I have not used a floppy in years, I wonder if Win7 supports
it too. Have you tried formatting it in XP mode?

I've done both quick formats and a full format on a floppy using Windows 7 Prof
64-bit doing a "custom install" after running Windows XP Prof (32 bit). I note
that there is a floppy disk driver in the system that seems to have been
produced by Microsoft.

and you made sure things are setup / working correctly in BIOS?

sometimes floppy settings are disabled or get reset ..

also if this is USB floppy a) enable legacy mode in bios and b) sometimes
eject / re-insert the floppy will make a difference.

B is important if you have the Virtual XP stuff installed.

hmmm... My PC is running W7 Ultimate 64-bit (OEM). The motherboard has an
Intel X58 chipset and there is a Sony floppy drive attached to the board's
34-pin connector that works as it should. You might have a driver/chipset
issue. Pretty tricky one, that.

Oh lordy lordy! My ample collection of 3.5" 1.44MB useable diskettes has
whittled away over the years to a mere two useable diskettes. Floppy rot.
They all die from it sooner or later.

As your system, based on a different chipset, with a similar floppy
drive connected to the onboard crtl. works, I think the issue is related
to the combination of my AMD chipset (RS780D with integrated Radeon HD
3300 graphics which I have disabled) and the Windows 7 64bit OS.

I have had clean installations of both WinXP64 and Vista64 running,
where the floppy drive worked without issues.

The first thing I do, after having installed, and activated, a new OS,
is to make a Ghost image of the clean installation, and save the image
for future use. It wasn't much trouble to restore the images, in order
to test for the problem.

I probably wouldn't ever have discovered the problem, if it wasn't for
the fact that I downloaded a new BIOS version for my second PC, from my
running Window 7 machine, and copied the BIOS to a floppy diskette.

I thought that everything was fine, until I had flashed the BIOS,
rebooted the computer, and got a hair raising msg. about a corrupted
BIOS, when the machine woke up :-) I am still surprised that it didn't
die totally :-)

My collection is on the loft. When I go, the inheritors can throw it out
:-)

Thanks for taking the time to test for the issue, and thanks to the rest
of you who replied to my msg.

I agree, as my Intel X48-based system is also able to read and format
floppies (well, once I'd got past the dodgy one that will now be thrown
away. 10 floppies left and counting. (3 MS_DOS 6.22 & 6 Win 3.11 disks & 1
freshly formatted)

I don't think there is a problem with Win 7 and floppy drives but the
default setting in Win 7 for drives without media to not be displayed.

I have an AMD 770. With Win 7 default settings neither an A: drive is
displayed nor and E: drive, my optical drive. When you insert a floppy
Win 7 doesn't scan it and show A: drive, but if you "Open" the computer
it's shown under removable drives and the A: drive can be opened from
there. I have no problem reading, writing, or formatting the floppy then.

You can change the setting in Windows Explorer to display all drives if
you so desire.

You didn't say HOW you are trying to format a floppy in Win7.

I haven't actually formatted one recently, but the process in Win7 Ultimate
is the same as in Vista: Start | Computer | Right-click on Drive A: |
Select Format from the menu. The last choice on the Format menu is still,
"Create an MS-DOS startup disk".

Is Home Premium different?

I am not blaming neither AMD nor Win 7 for my floppy drive woes.
:)
I was just describing my issue which had many intersections with LDJ's one.
Finally, I did what physicians do when they can't fix something in your
body: extracted the bad part and not replaced it with anything.
Have a nice day.

The formatting process is the same for Windows 7 Home Premium, as it was
for build 7100 which is the Win7 ultimate version AFAIK. Formatting a
floppy disk from the desktop, or formatting it from an elevated CMD
prompt, ends with errors.

It's not a formatting problem only. It's not possible to write to an
already formatted diskette, without getting CRC errors.

I have tried to boot to a failsafe cmd prompt, and tested formatting
from there, with no luck. I guess it's the same drivers that are being
used. Formatting a floppy disk from Virtual PC 2007 running an OS/2 Warp
4 machine doesn't work neither :-)

I have booted into DOS, from a bootable memomrystick, and there
formatted a floppy disk without problems, just to make sure that my HW
still works.

If Microsoft doesn't release a fix, I'll use the drive for booting
Ghost, when/if I want to make/restore a Ghost image. I can disable the
drive in device manager when I am running Windows 7.

OK. I just formatted a 3.5" floppy - and it went perfectly. ;<)

First, I had Windows Explorer show me the contents of Drive A:. Then I
shuffled in a couple of other diskettes until I found one that did not have
contents I didn't mind losing. Then, still in Windows Explorer, I
right-clicked on Drive A: (in the left-hand pane, the Navigation Pane -
click Organize | Layout if you are not sure what I'm talking about), then
clicked Format and chose to Create an MS-DOS startup disk, then clicked
Start. I didn't time it, but it took a couple of minutes. Then I checked
the contents and saw the expected MS-DOS files. No, I haven't actually
tried to boot from that floppy - haven't booted from any floppy in years -
but I'm confident that it would.

Then I Saved THIS thread to Drive A:, edited it with Notepad, and am
attaching the edited file to THIS message. No CRC or other errors at any
point.

As it says in my Sig, I'm running Win7 Ultimate x64, the RTM version 7600
from TechNet that I installed in August. My floppy disk drive is a very old
(15 years?) "combination" drive, with both 5.25" and 3.5" in a single
half-height internal case. (Remember those?) The only floppy driver is
what is built into the mobo and Win7.

What did you do - step by step? At what step did it fail? What error
message(s) (VERBATIM) did you see?

Well, curiosity got the better of me, so I DID boot from the floppy that I
made last night. I just set my BIOS to boot from the floppy drive, then
restarted the computer with the diskette in the drive - and it booted just
fine. DIR A: worked as expected; so did DIR C: to read the first partition
on the first HDD. I even TYPEd the contents of a file in a folder - er,
directory!

First time I've booted MS-DOS, or booted from a floppy, in years! ;<)