What to Do if Your
Floppy Drive Will Not Format a Disk

The purpose of this document is to provide instructions for troubleshooting a floppy drive that will not format a disk. If the drive is having general read or write problems, the steps listed below may not correct the problem. Troubleshooting the Floppy Drive:

1. If you can format other disks, the problem is with the disk rather than the floppy drive. The disk may be damaged or may be write protected. Verify the disk capacity and type is compatible with the system.

   Note: Due to the fact that some companies use floppy drives that are not industry standard, disks formatted on other computers do not always work on a Gateway computer. Disks formatted on a Gateway computer should work correctly on all industry standard machines.

2. If you are having trouble formatting in Windows, verify the correct disk capacity is displayed in the DISK, FORMAT DISK option of the Windows File Manager.

3. At the C:\>: prompt, reset the system. While the system is booting, the following message will appear: STARTING MS-DOS. . . When this message appears, press the F5 function key on the keyboard. This will allow you to "boot clean" or bypass the autoexec.bat and config.sys files while booting. After pressing the F5 function key, the following message will appear: MS-DOS is bypassing your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files.

   Note: This message will only appear for MS-DOS versions 6.x and higher. If you have an earlier version of MS-DOS, you will need to boot the system using a bootable floppy disk. If you are now able to format, you will need to determine which line(s) in the autoexec.bat or config.sys file is causing the problem.

4. Verify the system setup program displays the correct diskette drive type. To do this, you need to enter your systems CMOS setup screen. For information on how to do this, please refer to document 1140.

   Note: Some systems have security features that may cause floppy drives to function incorrectly. If applicable, disable the Password option in the system setup program. The Supervisor Password must be known to disable this option.

5. Delete the file FORMAT.COM from the DOS directory and copy the file from the MS-DOS disk. To copy the file, type: copy a:format.com c:\dos and press ENTER.

6. If you continue to have problems after completing these steps, there may a problem with system hardware, contact Customer Support for further assistance.

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