Jude/Cheryl Excuse me for jumping in but this drew my attention: On Tue, 27 Aug 2002 17:40:36 -0400 (EDT), Jude wrote: > I know what's going on. Your laptop and your desktop do not share > identical disk formats for floppy disks. The disks you were sent will > work with your desktop machine since that's probably standard format, but > your laptop has a different and possibly proprietary disk format in use. Hello? There is only "one" standard for FDD and that's the good ol' Sony HD 1.44MB standard. If floppy disks work on one machine, they should work on another machine! The ONLY exceptions to this rule are the following: 1. The floppy was formatted in a completely non-standard way. The only Linux distribution that I know which uses that kind of format (1.7MB format) is tomsrtbt -- and that is a VERY special case indeed (entire linux system on one floppy -- but I digress). Most Linux distributions use standard, 1.44MB floppies. Which is why Slackware 8.1 is a pain to install (5 "root" floppies -- but I digress again). 2. The floppy disk itself is totally defective. Highly possible since floppies have a very, very short life span. And don't give me the "but I have used the same floppy for the past three years!" lecture -- they just don't make 'em like they used to. 3. The FDD itself is going bonkers. Replace the FDD and retry. I think you mentioned this before... Just my US$ 0.02... -- Gil Andre ___ Technical writer ___ Arkeia Corporation email: gandre@arkeia.com | web: http://www.arkeia.com