Could be your floppy drive "killed" the floppy disk. I've had that happen to me and when that happens it's screwed basically.

If your able to restart the PC you should be able to get basic information from the BIOS screen. either from the post screen or actually going into bios.

@DracoNihil, that is possible, but the drive on the 'target' machine is having issues reading, not necessarily writing. It doesn't usually get that far into this. I can still read/write that same floppy on any of the original 'formatter' computers I've used them on. While I can't really rule out that the drive itself is bunk, to replace I'd have to shut it down; I am not sure how integrated this computer is to our HVAC control system.

@chinny22, indeed, but as stated above, not sure I can restart this willy-nilly. That's on me to find out of course. Also, can't really get screenshots of CPU-Z from BIOS, eh?

Though this does bring up the question of how far back CPU-Z can be run...Will it run and correctly identify a 486, for example? See what type of SIMMs you've got populated? Hmm.....

CPU-Z and GPU-z alternatives for 95 and 98?
Which CPU-Z version runs on Windows NT 4.0 SP1?

I'd say if you don't know how critical that machine is then you need to find out.....of course that's how shit breaks but that's the fun part. Just make sure to get approval first 😁

Even with reading I've had that happen, like for example: It successfully "reads" the filesystem, but the moment I try to copy any files off the disk is destroyed. Nothing can ever read or write to it ever again.

DosFreak wrote:

CPU-Z and GPU-z alternatives for 95 and 98?
Which CPU-Z version runs on Windows NT 4.0 SP1?

I'd say if you don't know how critical that machine is then you need to find out.....of course that's how shit breaks but that's the fun part. Just make sure to get approval first 😁

Sweet! Thanks! I tried searching for 'cpuz' a few times, but it came up and said it was too common a word, and/or too short a search term. 😀

If you want to fix that floppy drive try blowing compressed air into it in short bursts- cleans all the dust out. Works for me every time; usually the problem is just dust.

Your symptoms read like classic drive head misalignment. Floppies work in one machine, not another. I don't have a very good source on correcting this; because it's been much cheaper to replace a bad floppy drive than repair it for about 2 decades now. And like the other posts have stated, a bad drive will kill the diskette effectively. ...hrm "diskette"... there's a fun word to type again. 😀

CPU-Z is a little finnicky with anything that could be pre-pentium, but anything starting from the p5 60s onwards should be recognized. Why don't you try HWInfo? It's DOS based and weighs nothing, plus it works wonders.

Well, I tried the canned air in the drive real quick. No effect that I could discern. Of course, then shit hit a fan it found by the side of the road, so I didn't spend a lot of time on it. Will keep trying, though! Thanks for the suggestions!