Windows 10: USB Floppy disks not auto-reading

I got myself a USB based floppy disk drive for my PC, so I could put my DOSBOX games and MIDIs on actual floppies.

The issue I'm having is that the disks don't read when I switch them out. In order to make them read I need to open and then close the Format Menu for my A: drive. After the PC boots up, the first disk inserted will auto-read, but subsequent disks will not unless I do this trick. It isn't a huge deal, but it means I have to get out of DOSBOX every time I want to change disks, which is a bit annoying.

I understand Win10 isn't exactly optimized for such an old format, but if there's anything I can do to smooth out the experience, I'd appreciate it.

:)

 

USB (A:\) floppy drive won't refresh it's contents when switching floppies in Windows 10 Anniversary 1607

Hello. I have a USB device that can read old 3.5 floppy disks - assigned to A:\ - and every time I switch floppies. It won't refresh when I put a new one in there and still has the previous content from the other floppy. It doesn't happen w/ Windows 10 1511.
It does happen w/ 1607 a/k/a the Anniversary Update. The only way I can get the USB floppy to refresh it's contents is to unplug and plug it back in. Microsoft can you fix this in a future update please? Thanks.

This guy has the same problem as me. I'll post a link of his. USB Floppy disks not auto-reading - Windows 10 Forums

My Windows 10 version is 1607 (OS Build 14393.222)

 

USB (A:\) floppy drive won't refresh it's contents when switching floppies in Windows 10 Anniversary 1607

Seeing a customer with this exact same issue on Win10 / 1607 (14393.222). Unfortunately an old printing press machine requires the use of floppy disks as a data input mechanism, so we can't just use a USB stick. Hopefully a fix will come with next monthly
update next Tuesday.

 

Welcome to the forum. That's normally a hardware fault common in MS-DOS days it's the change line on the disk that isn't working

 

It's possible that the floppy drive mechanism and/or the floppy-to-USB bridge chipset have not implemented change line support.
Dunno whether DOSBOX inherently supports this either....

 

The weird thing is; it can tell when there's NO disk (it won't update to show, but it also won't let me even attempt to format), and win8 was able to reload just by right clicking.
I don't know a lot about this change line thing, so I don't know if this info is relevant or not. Maybe one day I'll get a second floppy drive to compare against, but until then, it's only a minor inconvenience. Thanks for the help guys.

 

IIRC there are two ways to tell whether the disc has changed (or is empty)

• Monitor the change line data from the drive
• Spin the disc, try to read, and see what happens

DOS, and versions of Windows prior to 95, supported both of these methods.
It's said that the floppy driver in Windows 95 dropped #1 - after that, people stopped talking about it so I don't know whether this is relevant to more modern versions of windows.

What you're describing above is method #2.

 

I have the same problem and he got when I upgrade Windows from 1511 to 1607 anniversary.
First disk is readable but second and more not refreshing no matter if I click on A in file explorer or push F5. But.... if I remove usb cable and then put back to PC floppy read the disk. It works like USB flash drive *Smile . The problem persist on any model of PC which I have and no matter of floppy device manufacturer. This problem was not with Windows 10 /1511.