Wondering why Windows XP wants to access the floppy drive

[Jettah]

Hi,

Whenever I log on or off to Windows XP, or switch from account for that matter, the floppy drive is accessed. So there is a floppy in the drive on a permanent basis. When de floppy is not there, the drive makes a hell of a noise to notify its needs, but why does it want a floppy and how can I overcome this problem?

Regards,

Tjitte

[kd7ota]

This problem is happening with one of the computers at the Newspaper office I am currently working at. For no reason it 'makes love' to the floppy and tries to access it.  Not sure if its a OS problem or if the motherboard you have just checks for it like a mad man.

I dont have a solution to fix it, but if having a disk in it solves the problem, you might have to stick to that. :-D

[Ilwrath]

Hmm.... Could be lots of reasons...  Most likely is that it isn't WinXP at all, though.  Are you running a virus scanner, perhaps?  Most scan floppies at bootup, login, logoff, and shutdown.  (And some, like Norton and McAfee rattle the floppy drive, even if there is no disk in it...)

[graffias79]

I've also noticed that if you save a file from any program under windows XP to drive A: (well maybe not any program but more likely IE or some other M$ program) then XP likes to keep tabs on that drive for some reason.  Probably looking at the drive because it's in some "recently used" list or something, and as you know XP likes to have its fingers in everyone's pie.

The more I use WinUAE and AROS the more pukey windows seems lol

-Jamie

[KennyR]

Windows is stupid, and has been stupid since the Win95 days. If you load up IE, for instance, the floppy drive will try to access and any CD in the CDROM drive will spin up, which can be incredibly annoying, and probably bad for the drive. Bad design, bad implementation.

[adolescent]

That's not a standard thing.  I've never had the floppy or CD-ROM accessed when launching IE.  As for the shutdown.  It's probably a floppy check from Antivirus.  I know Norton (NAV or SAV) does this to make sure a bootable floppy is not there.  You can turn it off if you want to.

[cecilia]

The more I use WinUAE and AROS the more pukey windows seems

i started out using Amiga and I'm always reminded how dumb windows is when i have to use it. and i keep my system very clean and it's basically problem free. but that's because I'm parnoid and don't install programs on it or do anything that could possibly cause it problems.

one always feels freer with amiga. i'm willing to experiment with amiga.

I do think this present problem (to get back to the topic) has to do with a program that had accessed the floppy and then was closed - thus it "remembers" the floppy. look at all the programs that are running on boot up and see what's up with their prefs, or where they are expecting to load something.

yup, windows is dumb!
 :-(

[blobrana]

Hum,
Disable the floppy in the bios....?



[yes windoze is dumb, but i use `hal asistant` with the alice brain (chatterbot) and it seems to be learning...]

[Seacoast]

...how can I overcome this problem?

You might want to check your BIOS settings. They're accessible before Windows begins loading usually by pressing the {DEL} or one of the {Fx} keys. If the screen doesn't tell you how to do it, check the manual. Once on the settings screen, go to the BOOT tab and move the floppy down in the boot order. With XP you could easily make the CD drive the first in boot order and put the floppy after the hard drive.

Also try putting your computer into Hibernate mode instead of using Turn Off. Hold down the {SHIFT} key when you get the Turn Off dialog box and "Suspend" becomes "Hibernate." This will save you a lot of time when you restart your computer. You should be up and running in about 30 seconds.

HB

[koaftder]

>>Whenever I log on or off to Windows XP, or switch from account for that matter, the floppy drive is accessed. So there is a floppy in the drive on a permanent basis. When de floppy is not there, the drive makes a hell of a noise to notify its needs, but why does it want a floppy and how can I overcome this problem?

Check your environment variables. If your path includes the floppy drive, you will end up with all kinds of annoying probing of the floppy disk, as applications traverse the path variable upon startup.

It could also be a registry value pointing to the floppy drive thats being access by a few applications. You can goto the sysinternals website and get a free tool that will let you log  what areas of the registry are being accessed along with the application accessing it.

I havent personally seen that behavior since win98.