Ok here is the story, I worked on this lady's computer and sent it back to her, so everything is fine until she goes to use word perfect in DOS and trys to save something on drive A (Floppy) and she gets a Disk error 30, so I bring it back home pop a disk in and access the drive A fine, either adding files to it or coping files to the desktop from the drive, so I fire up WP and it gives me the same error, SO she claims it worked before sending it to me so now it has become my problem, I think that the disk she is using are unformatted myself but these are disk she has used in the past that have saved files on them, is it common for them to unformatted themselves? or does anyone have a solution for this?

Not enough information to guide you.

What did you do to the system? That may have affected the WP for DOS. What version of Windows?
What version of WP?
Have you tried other floppies both drives and disks? Maybe she has a 720K floppy and purchased a barch of 1.44 floppies? Come to think of it, can you buy 720K floppies?


Not nearly enough info. Post back with full system specs, what you did to the PC and versions of Windows and WP.

She is using WP 5.1 her system is a older HP system using Win ME When originally you turned on the computer a if I remember correctly it would popup and say a runtime error has occured, filename too long, so I went into the startup programs and disabled it, other than that all I did was clean the inside of her computer and installed memory.

It would depend on what file you disabled. Can you find out?

LFNBK I incorrectly stated the error, it was Long filename backup bad command line, but I went in and did a normal startup and tried to save to A again and it still gives me the error.

To eliminate one possible cause...

Delete all the shortcuts in the "C:\WINDOWS\Recent" folder...
Especially if they lead to a file on a floppy in the FDD.

Sometimes when you attempt to do certain things in Windows, it 1st checks if all these recently accessed files are available, and if it cannot find one of them [usually a file on a floppy that's no longer in the drive], it refuses to proceed and gives an error warning.

Try using something other than Windows to save [a text file] to a floppy.
e.g. A Knoppix Linux Live CD or an "Emergency Boot CD" = EBCD.
If that works fine it's a software problem.

Anyone that relies on floppies for keeping their information on wants their heads examined. They are notoriously fickle and can stop funtioning, be unreadable or give such messages as not formatted. Just putting them on top of a computer case near the power supply or beside some speakers can corrupt them with stray magnetism. Running scandisk on them can sometimes make corrections to the file system (particularly if they are not too full) but programs like GetDataBack for FAT (http://www.runtime.org) are probably the best hope of retrieving data from corrupt floppies.

PS Run GDB or similar for data recovery. Only run scandisk if you want to try to get a floppy functional but data recovery is not important.

Buy her a USB thumbdrive, install Open Office and call it a day. ;) :D

I trust you're judgment when you say that, but why would I be able to copy to and remove file to the desktop from the same Floppy, but I can't do anything in Word perfect, this lady has about 12 years of medical files stored on floppys dumb yes and I told her that, but since she """says""" it worked before me and not after me it has became my issue, I have undone all the things I did to it to no avail.

I could not find a C: windows "Recent" this is Win ME is it called something else?

Anyone that relies on floppies for keeping their information on wants their heads examined. They are notoriously fickle and can stop funtioning, be unreadable or give such messages as not formatted. Just putting them on top of a computer case near the power supply or beside some speakers can corrupt them with stray magnetism.

I have a box of MS-DOS v5 original install floppy disks (5x 5.25" 360KB), and they were read just fine afew days ago. It says "(C) 1991" on the box and floppies, so they should be 16 years old.

But I have to agree with you about 3.5" floppies. They are so unreliable that I still keep 5.25" floppy drives...

I trust you're judgment when you say that, but why would I be able to copy to and remove file to the desktop from the same Floppy, but I can't do anything in Word perfect, this lady has about 12 years of medical files stored on floppys dumb yes and I told her that, but since she """says""" it worked before me and not after me it has became my issue, I have undone all the things I did to it to no avail.

I could not find a C: windows "Recent" this is Win ME is it called something else?

Well I deleted all history, and went back in and I am able to save to a disk now, so I guess that fixed it, either that or the 5 times I hit it with a hammer.......

"I deleted all history, and went back in and I am able to save to a disk now"
Isn't Windows strange? :confused:

Nice that it's working though. :)

I now run Win2000Pro, but it was the same in Win98[and SE].

I think your temp files were over flowing. No documents will show on any MRU list in the Windows Registry when running WordPerfect for DOS. DOS does not write to the registry as it does not know the registry exists....

I have no idea what Error 30 is; a system error or a WordPerfect error. Also why did you say is it common for them to unformatted themselves which is what I was in particular referring to earlier.

There is a page about a Macro Bug in WP 5.1 (http://www.graphcat.com/docs/floppy.html) which does elucidate a problem specific to WP, which is what seems (on re-reading) to be specific about this post.

FWIW I did find this:
"I/O Error 30 is described as usually happening when trying to install the programs from a diskette. It means either the disk or the drive is not working correctly".

and this

I/O Error 30 (http://erikmartin.com/pro/ioerrors.html):
IO Error 30L
ERROR_READ_FAULT
MessageText:
The system cannot read from the specified device.

Am I right in thinking that WordPerfect for DOS was running within a DOS Virtual Machine within Windows?

It should run just fine on WinME

http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/winbasics.html#howinstall