virtualbox.org

Hi, I'm new to the forums here. I've just installed a Windows 95 guest on my Slackware 12.1 Linux host. Everything works fine, including internet access, but I can't seem to read any floppy disks. I've tried real disks and .img files. I always get the error that "A:\ is not accessible - The device is not ready." or in a DOS command prompt it's the "Not ready reading drive A:" message. CDs have no problem.

I know the vm can read the disks because I can boot the vm with a Win98 startup disk to start the Win95 setup. My Win98 and 2000 vms have no problem with the same disks. If I exit Windows to DOS mode I can read the floppies. I've tried removing and reinstalling the driver for the fdd controller. I've tried changing the IDE controller type from PIIX4 to PIIX3. In Device Manager there's no problem with the fdd or ide devices, but I have some devices that I don't have drivers for: the sound card (I'll deal with that later), a PCI bridge and 2 PCI cards (one is the USB controller).

I've tried searching but haven't found anything that even seems similar. I hope somebody can help.

Same here, since a long time (having host A: as floppy). Workarounds: e.g. reboot into DOS, unmount and mount floppy (host A: as floppy). Another option: set up file sharing between guest and host (in my case: Win XP host).

Thanks for the reply. It's helpful to know I'm not the only one with this problem. A workaround that I've been using is to copy the files into a CD iso. I'm about to try using VirtualBox version 1.5.6 instead of 1.6.0 to resolve another unrelated issue, and at the same time I'll see if it fixes this problem.

i am also having the same problem with Win98, but mine goes even farther in that if i have any floppy controler setup in vbox and try to start win98, win 98 hangs up at the found new hardware, if i boot into dos i can use the floppy.
i have win98 and fedora 8 in vbox on an hp pavilion 533w with 1.5GB of memory, 845g intel video, .
i have also tried vfd and win98 still hangs up. i have disabled the floppy controller in the hp bios and tried to use only vfd (Virtual floppy disk). In fedora 8 i can use the fdd.