Writing to floppy in Office XP hangs up machine. Any ideas?

[Daman0727]

This happens inconsistently on several machines. Win2k w Office XP. All
updates applied. If you open a document from the floppy, close it, create a
new document and save to floppy it writes ok. If you don't access floppy
first just create a new document and try to write to floppy system locks up.
The only way to get out of it is to restart the machine.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

You should not be opening/writing from Office (particularly Word) directly
to/from a floppy. Word in particular creates copious temporary files, often
vastly exceeding the space available on a floppy (sometimes many times
larger than the file). This makes document corruption much more likely.

The correct procedure is to use Office to work only on files that are on
your hard drive. When done, close the file and use Windows Explorer to copy
it to a floppy, CD, DVD, ZIP drive, etc. When you want to edit something
that's on removable media, copy it to your hard drive first. Then work on
the copy on your hard drive.

In addition to file integrity considerations, working from your hard drive
is a LOT faster.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Daman

It is best not to save or open directly from floppy.. always do the transfer
from hard drive to floppy and back using regular XP functions..

 

[Daman0727]

Thanks for the replies- It wasn't what I wanted to hear, however I may have
to resign myself to the fact that floppy access from word is problematic. I
would think Microsoft would have something about this in all their MS Word
product information ...etc. Believe it or not there are some situations where
writing to a floppy is the ideal solution...like in student class situations.
It allows the student take their work with them and it's a cheap solution.

Thanks again for the reply.

 

[Bob I]

In Word, working directly with a floppy is NEVER an ideal situation. The
hanging issue is likely due to the W2K rollup update. Install the
recently released corrected version 2 of the update.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

I understand. However, "Word ate my assignment" is a very real possibility.
;-) Fortunately, just about every computer equipped with Word, also has
Windows Explorer. And students would do well learn this particular "best
practice" so they're ahead of the game. The 10 seconds you save "here" might
cost you hours of work on the other end.

Cheers,

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Daman

It has never been a good idea to save directly to floppy from any
application.. the problem is not just with MS Word..

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Actually, *never* isn't quite true. My first computer had *only* floppy
drives, and WordStar handled them with aplomb. Of course, that was 20 years
ago or so, running CP/M. Back then, everything was done in memory (and
precious little memory, at that), then written back out to disk.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

.... As did Tasword, Ability and GemWrite, but that was back in the days of
DOS 2.11, so that makes you as old as me..

I have never found that Windows apps cope particularly well, and after a few
lost documents as others have pointed out, saving directly to floppy became
a big no-no..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User

Actually, *never* isn't quite true. My first computer had *only* floppy
drives, and WordStar handled them with aplomb. Of course, that was 20
years ago or so, running CP/M. Back then, everything was done in memory
(and precious little memory, at that), then written back out to disk.

 

[Beth Melton]

Perhaps if you had more information on why working directly off a
floppy isn't a good idea then it would be easier to accept. ;-)

Here is some background on what happens when Word performs a save:

Word creates a temp file in the same location as the document.
(basically two versions of the file on the floppy during this step)
Then it deletes original file and renames temp to take the place of
the original file.

If there isn't enough room to create the temp file then Word simply
does the best it can.

The best method is to press WinKey + E to open the Windows Explorer.
Select the Floppy drive and drag/drop the file from the Floppy
contents window to the Desktop on the left. View the Desktop contents
and double-click the file to open it.

Once you're finished editing and after the file is closed then
right-click the file and select Send to/3 1/2" Floppy. Once the copy
is complete then just drag the file from the Desktop to the Recycle
bin.

If you use this method I believe you'll find that response time while
working in the document is faster than working directly off the
floppy. Not to mention your chances of a corrupt file will have
substantially decreased.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

The issue is not with Word but with the Windows post SP-4 rollup that you
probably recently installed.

There is an update that fixes issues (such as this one) that did not show up
during the testing that has been released just this week. Uninstall the
prior Post SP-4 Rollup and install the newly released version and your
problem should be fixed.


--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, Daman0727 asked:

| This happens inconsistently on several machines. Win2k w Office XP.
| All updates applied. If you open a document from the floppy, close
| it, create a new document and save to floppy it writes ok. If you
| don't access floppy first just create a new document and try to write
| to floppy system locks up. The only way to get out of it is to
| restart the machine.

 

[James Silverton]

Milly wrote on Sat, 24 Sep 2005 09:20:43 -0700:

MSM> There is an update that fixes issues (such as this one)
MSM> that did not show up during the testing that has been
MSM> released just this week. Uninstall the prior Post SP-4
MSM> Rollup and install the newly released version and your
MSM> problem should be fixed.

I trust the instructions for uninstalling and installing will be
clear. I think microsoft has a certain amount of chutzpah in not
producing a completely automatic fix of their own errors.

James Silverton.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

I wouldn't know since I use Windows XP SP-2. For those who do run Windows
2000, I would expect that the update would do this for you, but it never
hurts to uninstall before installing the update.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, James Silverton asked:

| Milly wrote on Sat, 24 Sep 2005 09:20:43 -0700:
|
|| There is an update that fixes issues (such as this one)
|| that did not show up during the testing that has been
|| released just this week. Uninstall the prior Post SP-4
|| Rollup and install the newly released version and your
|| problem should be fixed.
|
| I trust the instructions for uninstalling and installing will be
| clear. I think microsoft has a certain amount of chutzpah in not
| producing a completely automatic fix of their own errors.
|
| James Silverton.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

Oh, and also, do you KNOW that it doesn't?

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, James Silverton asked:

| Milly wrote on Sat, 24 Sep 2005 09:20:43 -0700:
|
|| There is an update that fixes issues (such as this one)
|| that did not show up during the testing that has been
|| released just this week. Uninstall the prior Post SP-4
|| Rollup and install the newly released version and your
|| problem should be fixed.
|
| I trust the instructions for uninstalling and installing will be
| clear. I think microsoft has a certain amount of chutzpah in not
| producing a completely automatic fix of their own errors.
|
| James Silverton.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Beth

It doesn't take long too find out why working from a diskette is no fun..
slow access.. after editing it always tries to send it back to the
diskette.. the next time you try to open a document, you have to wait for
the diskette drive to finish crunching away.. sending the only version of a
document to a diskette which, when placed in another machine suggests that
you might want to format the damn thing.. XP deciding it doesn't really like
diskette drives.. finding out that Win 98 Backup that you used to get the
documents to all fit onto one diskette can't be read by XP backup (or 95 and
ME Backup)..

All of the above PLUS the problems that you have outlined with regard to MS
Word.. it's enough to put a sane person off of MS Word/Windows/Linux/DOS..

 

[Scott]

I just know started having this problem on a couple of machines myself
(around 4 ). I tried everything I could think of to fix the problem but no
luck. I however just so happened to stumble upon this link
"http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Office_2000_will_not_save_to_floppy-t47191.html"
It appears to be a problem with update "KB891861" and is fixed by
unistalling it. I haven't tried it yet but will post when I do.

 

[garfield-n-odie]

Version 1 of Windows 2000 Post-SP4 Update Rollup 1 had a known
issue of preventing saves to floppy disks. Version 2 of the
update (released on September 13, 2005) fixed that issue. Just
download Version 2 from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...CF-8850-4531-B52B-BF28B324C662&displaylang=en
and install it over Version 1 (no need to uninstall Version 1
first).