Virtual Floppy Drives
Modern computers do not come with floppy drives anymore which can turn out to be problematic if a software requires a floppy drive. This is usually software that has been written when floppy drives were more common and installed on every computer. Some older operating systems or software programs require a floppy drive for some of their functions.
Virtual floppy drives provide floppy drive functionality in Windows without the need to have a real floppy drive installed. They can be used to mount floppy drive images or use functions in software programs that want to write data to floppy drives.
Virtual Floppy Drive is probably one of the most popular tools to emulate a floppy drive. It is a portable software that is compatible with Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 are supposed to work as well). The user can access both the command line or graphical user interface version of the program as both are provided.
It is possible to emulate one or two floppy drives support a wide variety of different media types from 160KB (5.25") to 2.88MB (3.5"). The software supports file and RAM modes, persistent drive letters and integrates itself nicely into the Windows shell.
Advertisement
Thanks a lot. Great app.
This won’t work before XP boots up though, I need a sys level virtual floppy! Oh, well…
You are right David, it will only work in Windows.
Oh yes indeed, this is great software!
I’ve described it in my userguide for recovering XP on a Dell-laptop in case the user installed Vista as the main operating system.
See it over here: http://janennele.blogspot.com/2009/01/revert-back-from-vista-to-xp-on-dell.html
A note to Vista users : remember to run VFD as an Administrator (rt-click on vfd.exe and select “Run as Administrator”).. if you don’t do this.. the driver won’t install from the VFD control panel.
it won’t work on (64 bits – windows) the error “This driver has been blocked from loading” will appear.
thank you for your time.
ik it is nice
The “driver has been blocked” message is not due to 64-bit, but because Windows 7 refuses to install drivers from authors who do not pay Microsoft. There are ways to circumvent this, but even then it does not work as VFS has an internal check that automatically quits the program if it is run on a 64-bit system.
How do you circumvent this?
you circumvent this by downloading Virtual PC windows XP mode for Windows 7 and installing/using it under that.
It is a great little app. Unfortunately for users trying to convert OS/2 fix-pack images with LOADDSKF may be out of luck, An error of “media not supported” arises in this case. This means having to wait for the files to transfer to a USB Floppy then wait for UltraISO to to grind out the .ima image… instead of the lightening speed of the virtual floppy. Ugh! Only 35 more to go…
If you’ve got a better solution for me… I’d love to hear it.