Memory Card "Not Formatted" - No Solution from other memcard threads

So I'm playing FF8 ISO on ePSXe 1.9.25. After some bumps with the first few hours of gameplay and several attempts to get memcards working (I did), I made it through disc 1 (shutting down the gui and restarting with no problem). 2 hours into disc 2, the rom loads fine, but trying to access either memcard (I've only used one) and the cards read "not formatted."

running 2.6GHz, 8GbRAM with an AMDRadeon R9 M275 and Windows 10.

Currently using
scph1001.bin
pete's open gl2 2.9
epsxe spu core 1.9...

Memory Card "Not Formatted" - No Solution from other memcard threads