When you access a floppy disk, you may receive one of the following error messages: The same disk may work correctly with MS-DOS or Windows 95, or after you re-format the disk with Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003.

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This problem occurs on disks that do not contain a media descriptor byte in the BIOS parameter block (BPB) of the boot sector. Some older preformatted floppy disks do not contain a media descriptor byte. Older product disks may also not have the media descriptor byte.

The media descriptor indicates the type of medium currently in a drive. With MS-DOS and Windows 95, you do not have to set the media descriptor byte. Therefore this problem does not occur with these older operating systems.

The media descriptor byte is located in the BPB of the boot sector at offset 21 (15h) and in the first byte of each FAT on the disk.

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To resolve this problem, re-format the floppy disk with Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003.

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Warning: This workaround is for advanced users only. This workaround involves using a disk sector editor to modify the media descriptor byte on the floppy disk. Misuse of a disk sector editor may make all the data on the drive or volume permanently inaccessible. Disk sector editors function at a level "below" the file system, so the typical checks for maintaining disk consistency do not apply. This provides you direct access to every byte on the physical disk regardless of access credentials. Therefore, you can damage or permanently overwrite critical on-disk data structures. Use this workaround at your own risk.

To work around this problem, use a disk sector editor to change the BPB media descriptor byte to the appropriate value. For example, you can use the DiskProbe tool to do this on a Windows NT 4.0-based, Windows 2000-based, Windows XP-based, or Windows Server 2003-based computer. DiskProbe (Dskprobe.exe) is included with the Windows Support Tools for Windows XP Professional and Windows XP 64-Bit Edition, the Windows 2000 Support Tools, and Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit Support Tools.

The following table lists the most common media descriptor bytes:

   Byte   Capacity   Media Size and Type
   -------------------------------------------------

   F0     2.88 MB    3.5-inch, 2-sided, 36-sector
   F0     1.44 MB    3.5-inch, 2-sided, 18-sector
   F9     720K       3.5-inch, 2-sided, 9-sector
   F9     1.2 MB     5.25-inch, 2-sided, 15-sector
   FD     360K       5.25-inch, 2-sided, 9-sector
   FF     320K       5.25-inch, 2-sided, 8-sector
   FC     180K       5.25-inch, 1-sided, 9-sector
   FE     160K       5.25-inch, 1-sided, 8-sector
   FE     250K       8-inch, 1-sided, single-density
   FD     500K       8-inch, 2-sided, single-density
   FE     1.2 MB     8-inch, 2-sided, double-density
   F8     -----      Hard disk
				

The BPB media descriptor byte is located in sector 0 of the disk, and looks similar to this:

   addr  data:
   0000  EB 3C 90 4D 53 44 4F 53 35 2E 30 00 02 01 01 00
   0010  02 E0 00 40 0B F0 09 00 12 00 02 00 00 00 00 00

                        xx <---- This byte above XX is the media descriptor
                                 byte and is at offset hexadecimal 21 (15h).
				

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For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

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