How do I stop random floppy drive access in Win Xp?

spazzspazz
edited October 2004 in Science & Tech
Greetings and salutations! I need help with a very annoying Xp sp2 issue. It seems that after copying some files to floppy the drive now accesses when I start a program, open Explorer, open Control Panel, just about anything I do causes the drive to access for a few seconds. I've deleted all recent documents, checked the Pif folder in Windows and it's empty, I have inserted a floppy, pointed to it in Explorer, pointed to a different drive and closed Explorer hoping it would forget about the floppy drive but it still happens. I have had the pc for several years and it never did this before. I haven't added any hardware, but did upgrade to sp2 several weeks ago, this problem started after I used the drive since the upgrade. I have checked for spyware using several up-to-date spyware/adware programs.
Any ideas?
Thanks!

WinXp sp2
Pentium IV 2.26
Intel board
1023Mb Ram
80Gb Western Digital hard drive-2 partitions
nVidia GeForce FX 5200 128Mb dual 19" displays
floppy manuf. unknown
Nec Cd/Rw
Liteone DVD

Comments

  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited October 2004
    It could be your Anti-Virus program, perhaps in tandem with SP2's new security measures. Try setting the A-V to ignore the Floppy Drive and see if the problem goes away.
  • MancabusMancabus Charlottesville, VA
    edited October 2004
    I would also try clearing your MRU lists, Ad Aware will help you do that as it is one of the things it checks for.

    Sometimes if you've used the floppy to access a file in a program, the file location will get put on a Most Recently Used List, and those lists sometimes like to make sure the file that was accessed is still there.

    Otherwise profs idea seems more likely.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited October 2004
    Mancabus wrote:
    Otherwise profs idea seems more likely.
    I actually liked your suggestion better. I bet you called it. :)

    Worth trying both, though, if one doesn't do the job.
  • t1rhinot1rhino Toronto
    edited October 2004
    Turn your computer off. Open the case, and unplug the floppy drive. Turn computer back on. :D
  • spazzspazz
    edited October 2004
    Thanks for the replies. I found a few MRU's in the registry so I deleted them. I tried having Norton ignore the A drive. After rebooting the drive is still accessed each time I start a program or Explorer but it's shorter bursts than before. If it doesn't stop after several reboots I'll have to just unplug the drive. Not only does the problem slow everything down each time it accesses but it's driving me nuts listening to it. Now I have one more problem to tackle in another post. Thanks again for the help.
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited October 2004
    t1rhino wrote:
    Turn your computer off. Open the case, and unplug the floppy drive. Turn computer back on. :D

    hehehe i like his answer

    the only reason i can think that it still is accessing the floppy is because it thinks you still might wanna copy stuff to it, have u tried copying a file to somewhare else on ur computer, floppies are dumb, dumb answers usually work :)
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    F-Prot Av scan--there are virals that use fast find, some new.... And\Or put a blank floppy in the drive,and restart Windows and see if after that it behaves. And\Or turn off the Fast File Find feature used by Explorer, restart, and then exclude the floppy drive from the Fast File Find feature in XP. Fast Find actively indexes when anything that has an MRU or could save to an area it is told to index is used. The access to turn off for a drive of folder is in the properties dialog, QuckFinder Tab, in drive properties. Leave fast find on and choose Manual Update. You may have to restart XP. These instructions may have to be used only with XP SP2.

    Alternative in XP SP2, leave automatic update (which is talking about the QuickFinder automatic updating of the FastFind index on the drive properties|QuickFidner dialog and has nothing to do with Automatic Update for XP Updates) ON and set the time for update to every two-three hours and see if that works, and if not do a comprehensive AV scan and see if after a restart your problem vaporizes, and if still no luck then turn off the QuickFinder updating by setting it to manual. Manual will not totally turn off you Quickfinder, actually, AFAIK. Instead, XP will only update the FaqstFind\QuickFind Index when a new disk insertion notify is sent by the drive when this setting is chosen, and it can act this way with optical drives also.

    If turning it off does not help, definitely get the machine scanned with an AV that is very good at finding trojans, worms, and bots. F-Prot is one, and Command AV is another. (Both use same def sets, both have trials available that will kill, and F-Prot uses fewer system resources than many AVs and is VERY good and knows Spybots and some versions of SMARTBot and many trojans as well as worms, macro virals, javascript virals, etc.)
  • spazzspazz
    edited October 2004
    I'll give those things a try. Thanks for the info!
  • spazzspazz
    edited October 2004
    I don't see the Fast Find option for the floppy drive's properties. I customized the look of xp on my machine so maybe it's located somewhere other than when right-clicking for for drive properties? I see the option for other drives at the bottom of the properties window, although there is no QuickFind tab, just a check box, but nothing for the floppy drive.
    I always leave Auto Update in manual mode for notification only anyway. I don't like things happening without at least a prompt first.
    The only thing I haven't tried yet is scanning with another AV program. It does seem that the floppy access has gotten quieter for some reason, and maybe it's not happening quite as much since I cleared Stream MRU from the registry as Microsoft's site suggests.
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