cannot write to floppy

Having just trawled microsofts hardware support newsgroup there are a few people with the same problem but no answers.
Im running xp pro,on fat 32 everything is fine except when trying to write to a floppy I insert a NEW floppy into my drive and it will pop up with the error message, "Disk in drive is not formatted, do you wish to format now? I click on A: drive, green light comes on, it churns away then I get a message windows is unable to format.
If I double click on the rescue xpboot.exe it looks good until it gets to 1% then I get error disc error on track 0 head 0 sector not found, then Batch stopped no target ! umm need some advice please

1. RE: cannot write to floppy
Twinhead May-02-02 06:36 AM
In response to message 0

A few questoins and a possible clue:
1 In the BIOS, is The correct type of diskdrive stated? (1,44MB 3,5 Inch on port A, First port)
2 In the BIOS, is Floppy mode 3 DISABLED? (Must be)
3 Can you boot from a systemfloppy?
4 Can you read any floppy in WinXp?
If all checks out, WinXp is corrupted!
If not, your floppydrive could have failed.

2. RE: cannot write to floppy
bodger May-02-02 10:46 AM
In response to message 1

Thanks twinhead but checked all those before, and device manager, and trying to format using command prompt arrrrgh
However trusting nothing I found some old diskettes, the ones I was using were new Emtecs dos formatted
nothing till the 3rd one which was part of an apple mac prog.
1st attempt got to 23% format then error
C:\Documents and Settings\bodger>Format a:
Insert new disk for drive A:
and press ENTER when ready...
The type of the file system is RAW.
The new file system is FAT.
Verifying 1.44M
Invalid media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable

....getting better
then I tried command prompt
C:\Documents and Settings\bodger>format a:
Insert new disk for drive A:
and press ENTER when ready...
The type of the file system is FAT.
Verifying 1.44M
Initializing the File Allocation Table (FAT)...
Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)?
Format complete.

1,457,664 bytes total disk space.
10,240 bytes in bad sectors.
1,447,424 bytes available on disk.

512 bytes in each allocation unit.
2,827 allocation units available on disk.

12 bits in each FAT entry.

Volume Serial Number is 800A-2FEE

Format another (Y/N)?
yes please .........now all is well, it now formats and writes the new ones ok........ummm computers I will never understand them