www.virtualacorn.co.uk/forum

I've just installed VirtualRPC-SE on a Dell Inspiron with internal floppy, and while all drivers claim to have been installed correctly, any Acorn formatted disk only produces a 'disk not formatted' error. I've tried the HostFS solution suggested for an external floppy, all to no avail. Is there anything else I can try?
If my jargon is a bit off, please make allowances for this Microsoft techie who is trying to provide their Acorn-loving partner with a viable laptop to replace their dying A4.

Is the floppy on removable device (i.e. do you have a floppy and a CD unit and stick on the one you want). If so then the floppy hardware wasn't enabled when you installed the driver from the CD, so it didn't actually install.
If this is the case you need to copy the three floppy installer files to your harddisc from the original VA CD. These are
Floppyinstaller.exe
rawflpy.inf
rawflpy.sys
Copy all three into the same place on Windows - insert the floppy unit, make sure it's running, then double click on FloppyInstaller.exe.
The driver should install. You can check afterwards by going to
Control Panel ->System->Hardware->Device Manager
Then double click on Floppy Disc Drive
Then double click on Floppy Disc Drives
Check the driver provided, the new driver should be shown.

Hi Aaron
Thanks for the advice. Sadly, it ain't worked.
1. The floppy is a removable module but is treated by Windows as an internal drive.
2. The device driver still shows as flpydisk.sys, despite going through your described procedure and rebooting, twice. (And no other file has been added to the driver folder that might qualify as the Acorn driver.)
Any other thoughts? Is there a quick and dirty way of replacing the .sys file with another, Acorn file? (There speaks a Win-vic...)
Thanks

I appreciate that the floppy is a removable device that's treated as a fixed internal drive, but was the drive installed when oyu tried to install the Floppy Driver?
I need to know the name of the driver provided - not the name of the file.

The only info I can find on the driver is:
file version 5.1.2600.1 (XPClient 010817-1148)
It was installed across a network so I don't have the installation disks.
Is this the useful info?
(Lengthy time in replying caused by illness, so I might be being thick....)

OK. In order to find the name of the driver do the following:
Go to Windows Control Panel
(If you have a performance and maintainance section go to that)
Double click on System
Click on Hardware
Click on Device Manager
Double click on Floppy disc drives
Double click on floppy disc drive
Click on the Driver tab.
Who wrote the driver?
I bet it's MicroSoft - if it is then the VA floppy disc driver hasn't been installed