My floppy drive's driving me crazy

[Movieguy]

I have a Dell Dimension series l800r from the year 2000, with Windows ME. It's been very reliable until recently.

No matter how much memory I free up (It has about a 10 gigabyte capacity on the Hard Drive, and I've gotten it to two free gigabytes) my floppy drive just decides to interfere with everything.

See, whenever I start windows, my internal floppy drive will suddenly light up and start spinning, making this noise ("vud-vud-vud-vud-vud-vud-vud, vud-vud-vud-vud-vud-vud-vud" it sounds like) for a couple of minutes before windows loads completely.

Also, whenever I try to play any kind of CD on my CD-ROM drive, first windows will freeze up for a moment, and then the floppy drive will light up and start spinning for what seems like an eternity before the CD-ROM drive finally fires up.

It's become a real annoyance. I've defragmented my hard drive, run at least a thousand virus scans and spyware scans, and nothing can seem to stop my floppy drive from doing this. Is there anyway that I can go into my system and just de-activate this drive for the time being? I really don't need it for anything now that I have my external zip drive.

 

[zoomtm]

i would suggest reinstalling windows 98 or 2000, stay away from windows me

 

[rat_boy_100]

its normal for ur floppy drive to start spinning on boot up, its the bios checking if you have a boot disk or something in the drive, also, i think it spins when you open 'my computer' so it can show the file name of the disk on the floppy drive icon (just like it does with a CD). I'm not sure why it is taking so long to do it though, maybe its just nakerd. have you tried another floppy drive, or no floppy drive at all? (if you dont needone)

 

[The_Other_One]

rat_boy_100, will you READ the question? He says when WINDOWS STARTS!

I've had similar problems like that. I beleive some virus scans even do this, but usally just for a second. I'm not sure why it would continue like this :-/

Reloading would definetly be an option, 98 or 2K as mentioned would be my choice too.

Another suggestion would possibly be trying to disable the drive and see what it does then. Maybe if you get an error, it'll help direct us to the problem?

Um...well as I mentioned, maybe it's something with virus software. Perhaps try and disable it? Or run something like Hijack this and see if you can remove anything. I know it does it past startup, but I just think there might be something there that is causing it...

 

[rat_boy_100]

rat_boy_100, will you READ the question? He says when WINDOWS STARTS!

lol ok...sorry

 

[Movieguy]

Well, removing ME is not an option for me, because I don't have 2000 or 98 available to me.

I have the Anti-virus guard, which runs virus scans every morning, updates itself constantly, and it hasn't turned up a thing (Norton malfunctioned on me a long time ago, and I had to take it out, and I don't have any way of re-installing it since the disks are gone).

And I don't think I can just remove the floppy drive, since it's an internal drive on my tower, so it looks like I'm stuck

 

[rat_boy_100]

And I don't think I can just remove the floppy drive, since it's an internal drive on my tower, so it looks like I'm stuck

ofcourse you can remove ur floppy...unscrew the side off, and whip the 2 cables out. one is a long flat (IDE/Floppy) cable and one is a power plug with 3 or 4 wires on it, then, if you want to take the actual drive out of the tower, theres screws either side of it holding it into the drive bay.

 

[Kage]

Or I guess you could just disable the drive

Try going into my Computer, right clicking the floppy drive, going to properties, Got to Hardware, Select the floppy disc, and then go to properties again. Then in General ont eh new window, set it to disable at the bottom. Maybe that would work by disabling teh driver to run it.

I think you have a faulty floppy disc you see, and doing anything else won't fix it. Thugh removing it could be an option, but doing it my way, you could enable it again if you wanted to use it...

To enable it (because it dissapears form my computer once u disable it) you'd go to Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager, and find the floppy drive that has an 'X' on it, and right click and enable it. Simple as that!

*KaGe*

 

[Movieguy]

I'd love to simply disable my floppy drive Kage, but I can't seem to find the "hardware" option you're talking about when I select "properties for the floppy drive.

 

[Kage]

It should be at the top as tabs, saying Hardware. When the menu comes up, it should be in General with used space and free space, and should be another 4 tabs or so...

You can disable it another way like i said to enable it again.

Go into Start, Control Panel
Then System,
Then under Hardware in the tabs,
Device Manager.

Then find the floppy disc drives with a plus next to it, expand it by pressing this so underneath is 'Floppy disc drive' adn right click it and go to Disable.

Try that

*KaGe*