Why would I need a virtual floppy drive? Many laptops and desktop computers are being built without the old handy floppy drive. But there are still some times when you need to use it. Some older programs still need to use a floppy drive and even some windows recovery features make use of a floppy drive.
This is also very useful for virtual machines such as VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC.
This free very useful program is called Virtual Floppy Drive 2.1.
Here is a quick overview and some screen shots.
Open the program, choose a drive 0 or drive 1.
Click on Open, the browse to where you want to store your floppy disk image.
Once you have the file name and location set, choose “Create”.
There you have it. You now have a virtual floppy drive. You can also set the drive letter with the “Change” button.
If you have any trouble, just stop and start the driver to “reset” things.
This program is —— in that I can’t run most auto extract dos programs to a: . I have to make a disk image…because the extracting exe does not detect this virtual —-. pissed.
Well, the tool worked for me. The order that I did things in was :
On Drive tab, chose auto, clicked install and then start.
Switched to Drive 0
created my image, assigned the drive letter A (I had to do this specifically), then formatted, and voila, my Dell BIOS app found the floppy and extracted to the image.
UBER useful tool.
Cheers,
Me.
Yes, it worked for me too, but I can not change the disk (media) when sitting in drive A (command prompt A:>)
We can change for the normal floppy right?
This is a great tool!
I’m using it for batch automation from C# code, and it works like a charm. That is, until Gates & co created Windows 7. WHY?!?!
Anyone who knows how to use this tool (VFD) or any other virtual floppy tool with a command line interface in windows 7?
Hi, I was hoping you could help me on a particular situation I’m having to get through? An honestly, I’ve hit a brick wall several times. So here’s my situation, I’ll try to explain it as clear as I can and again, any help on this would greatly help me. I have a Gateway laptop, MA7 with a DVD drive and no Operating system. I begin to install XP PRO and it says ‘no hard detected’? So it needs the F6 driver add-in during the XP installation process, however the problem is the Gateway MA7 laptop has “NO FLOPPY DRIVE” so I go to the Gateway web-site, they have this driver for this very problem, but it needs to be created on a floppy disc, which I do not have to extract it on to a floppy disc on any of my systems (3) systems total. So do you think there is a way to do this via a USB Flash drive? or do you think I have no choice and have to buy a USB floppy drive? During the F6 option pick of the XP installation, XP asks for the driver and specifically looks for specifically an A: floppy drive. I down loaded the driver file from Gateway and when you initiate it to extract, it too is looking for a floppy drive to write to. I hoping or thinking that maybe I could create a Virtual floppy drive A: on my download system then write them to a USB flash drive, then on the USB flash drive, create some sort of code via the autoexec.bat & config.sys files that would allow me to boot via the USB port (which the MA7 can do) and basically fool the MA7 laptop into thinking it has a floppy drive so when loading XP it can find the driver files to recognize the hard drive. I guess this is a known problem for the Gateway laptop, that’s why they have the hard drive driver files on their website for down loading to fix this issue. I hope I was pretty clear on what the problems are and I’m hoping you may have a solution to get around this problem. Any help would be a BIG help at this point and again, thank you in advance.
Regards, Kevin in Cleveland, Ohio
Recap:
I need a Virtual floppy drive A: created in XP on an exiting running machine to write driver files to.
I then need to create a virtual floppy drive via a bootable USB flash drive to fool the laptop into thinking it has a floppy drive to read the driver files during the XP F6 installation option.
Again, thanks for your time, Kevin
I think you’re mis understanding the problem. I’ve encountered such on hp systems with SATA hard drives. When win xp installation is about to start, it tells you no drive found. Solution: Just go to the bios settings. Move around and look for disk sanitizer, disk cleanup or anything that has same meaning. Start this tool. It should take hours but will definitely prepare the drive for the operating system. Hope you get it.
I have the same problem that Kevin W. It seem that there is no solution for this issue since nobody else has reply for one. I just hope that some Subject Matter Expert, or someone that has experience the same situation and resolved it, can help us.
Regards
snoopy
Hi snoopy, i replied your friend kevin on this issue. Get to him.
I am using Win vista… and it is giving an error while installing the drive.. “Failed to install virtual floppy drive”
I had the same problem as Kevin W. and snoopy.jrre mention with an old Alienware laptop a few years ago. My solution was to “slipstream” the floppy files into a Windows XP install CD (in my case it was the Intel RAID storage drivers that I needed). There are good detailed instructions all over the web on how to do this – google “slipstream XP” and have a ball. The guide that I used came from TheElderGeek’s website.
I hope that helps someone.
I had this problem to and work around it by using the windows compability mode, as a windows xp service pack 2.
Need Help ! I am using a windows 7 platform and each and every time i try to open virtual floppy, windows give me the following error: ‘Virtual floppy drive does not run on Windows 95/98/Me’. I tried the compatible mode of windows and nothing works. Any tips/recommendation ?
wow John ….. sorry to say that the question asked in the first place was completely missed….
long and short of it…. same problem… same thoughts on this idea…. answer to what I have found and discovered….. if you do not have a functioning operating system in which the driver can load and run? …. your hooped ….. USB floppy or slipstream the install….. that’s it… long and short of it…. all the research and miscommunications of what VFD can do in the first place… well…. a program that needs a driver to run cannot be detected by the bios in the boot sequence…. it does not emulate the hardware rom ….. it only emulates amfloppy in an operating system environment …… beat my head against the wall with this one…. off to slipstream it and stop wasting my time……