Creating an Emergency Repair Disk Fails - Disk Unusable

 Last reviewed: March 19, 1998
Article ID: Q165710
The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 3.5, 3.51, and 4.0
  • Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.5, 3.51, and 4.0

SYMPTOMS

When you use the Create Repair Disk option of the Repair Disk Utility you can receive the following error: 

   An unknown error has occurred reading from or writing to the disk.

   The disk is possibly unusable.

CAUSE

This error can be caused by having the disk drive in use and locked by a command prompt, Windows NT Explorer, Windows NT File Manager, or a file Save/Open dialog box. When the disk drive is locked, the Repair Disk utility cannot format the disk.

RESOLUTION

Close the window that has the floppy drive locked.

Additional query words: diskette fail doesn't work unexpected
Keywords : ntdomain NTSrvWkst kbenv kberrmsg kbsetup
Version : WinNT:3.5,3.51,4.0
Platform : winnt
Hardware : x86
Issue type : kbprb

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Last reviewed: March 19, 1998
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