Writing floppy disk in XP guest running under Windows 7 host causes lockup

[Russell Tobias]

Running VirtualBox Version 3.1.2 r 56127 under Windows 7 Ultimate with floppy drive running with standard floppy controller driver (Microsoft driver date 6/21/2006 version 6.1.7600.16385) which appears to work normally under Windows 7. If I boot up Windows XP guest operating system and then insert a floppy diskette, I can not access the floppy from either the guest or host operating systems. Following an earlier suggestion on this forum, I tried inserting the floppy diskette before starting VirtualBox and the guest OS. This works better, as I can now read the floppy diskette from the guest OS, but if I try writing to the floppy, the guest os hangs up indefinately. I need to be able to write floppy diskettes to use a particular application that runs only under XP; however, the application I used in XP to reproduce this problem is Microsoft Notepad and the only way to break out of the situation is to close down VirtualBox (as the Windows task manager apparently only will work on the host operating system). Anyone aware of this particular problem, and does it sound as if I am doing things properly? Under VB Storage the floppy shows up under "Floppy Controller - Floppy Drive 0: Host Drive A" which appears to be to be correct, and I can read the floppy from the guest, just can't write.

[Russell Tobias]

Vbox.log file

[Keith]

I'm running into the same issue. I'm using a Windows Vista 64 host (I don't think this matters).

It appears as though floppies are treated as read only in the guest. And you can't swap floppies. You can't really force unmount them either.

I have a couple of OS's that I would like to install (they're each on multiple floppies).

Something that sometimes works is to go back to the host system, eject the old floppy, insert a new one, click on it, then close it, return to the guest system and try to access it again.

It would be nice to be able to write to floppy from the guest. DOS 6.2 doesn't even see the USB ports.

Thanks.