[dba-Tech] Formatting diskettes

Gustav, Jon, Lembit, Bob,

For what it's worth, I have a clue. I noticed the trouble with
formatting a 3 1/2" diskette on a friend's system that I'm cleaning of
spyware and such. When I couldn't format a diskette on that system I
tried my main workstation as well as two others in my home office.
When they ALL came up with the same message -- no matter which
diskette I inserted -- I thought I'd look further.

I put in my Gibson Research SpinRite 6 CD and ran SpinRite on my main
workstation. One of its options is to create a boot diskette. I made
sure that I could read the directory on drive A: (it had four files on
it)...then I ran SpinRite. I clicked the option for creating the boot
disk. After a moment this message appeared:

Unable to acquire exclusive access to Drive A:. In order to format and
create a SpinRite 6 diskette drive A:, no other program can be
simultaneously viewing the contents of this drive. Please select
another drive for Windows Explorer or any command prompt window to be
viewing, and close any open files on this drive. Then click the
"Format and Write Diskette" below to retry the diskette creation."

Is this the problem? That something on all these Windows XP machines
is looking at drive A: in some way -- even if Windows Explorer shows
the folder of another drive?

Steve Erbach

On 5/8/05, Bob Geldart <bgeldart at verizon.net> wrote:
> Steve,
> 
> I'm still doing it on my PC (XP Home, SP-2).
> 
> I still have so many 3½ diskettes, and so seldom a great need, if one gives
> me a problem I toss it.
> 
> Bob