Floppy drive green activity light on after bootup

[Papa]

My floppy (3.5 inch, 1.44 MB, drive A) always has the green busy light on at
the completion of a bootup. If I insert a disk, then remove it, the light
goes off and stays off unless I reinsert and use another floppy disk. In
other words, if I use a floppy disk just once, after that the green busy
light works normally in that the light goes on when floppy activity is going
on, and goes off when the activity ceases. I think this behavior is causing
my system to take much longer to boot. There is nothing wrong with the way
this floppy drive works. It can do everything (read, write, format) OK. My
other floppy drive (5.25 1.2 MB) does not exhibit this behavior.

My operating system is Windows XP Pro with SP2 and all critical updates
installed. The hardware includes a Soyo SY-KT600 Dragon Plus mobo, an 80 GB
WD hard drive, a 2 GB WD hard drive, a 3.5 inch 1.44 MB floppy drive, a 5.25
inch 1.2 MB floppy drive, an Nvidia 64 MB video card, a Sound Blaster sound
card, a D-Link wireless PCI card, 512 MB of memory, a CD-RW drive, and a CD
drive.

I am using AVG (with email checking disabled) as my AV program, AdAware as
my antispyware program, and a pop-up stopper from Panicware. Neither Norton,
nor any other additional AV software, is installed.

 

[Papa]

Forgot to mention that my CPU is an AMD Sempron 2400+.

 

[Nick Burns]

Never seen this one, but I would swap the floppy out. Or use a 98 boot disk
and boot up using it. If the drive light is normal then you have an OS
problem.

 

[Richard Urban]

Clean out your "My Recent Documents". If there is a file in there that was
accessed through your floppy drive it can/may cause this to occur.

--

Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew half as much as you think you know,
You'd realize you didn't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Papa]

Thanks, Nick and Richard.

As you suggested, Richard, I deleted everything in My Recent Documents and
rebooted. No help there. Then I went into Documents and Settings/my
name/Local Settings and deleted everything out of the Temp and Temporary
Internet Files. After that I cleared out the files, cookies, and history in
my IE browser, cleared out the files in C:\Windows\Temp, rebooted again, and
again no help.

Nick, as you suggested, I booted up with a W98 bootup floppy in the drive.
It booted up OK, and the green floppy light went off afterwards. However, I
booted up again with a non-boot floppy in the drive (inserting it just after
getting past the first Windows splash screen to avoid a non-boot disk error
message). The green light went off again like it ought to, and the boot time
was much faster. So I don't think the OS is at fault.

My guess is that the floppy drive is mechanically defective. Perhaps the
sensor that detects whether or not a disk is inserted is the problem.
Anyway, everything in this system is brand new EXCEPT the 2 floppy drives. I
will be buying a new floppy today and will post the result after testing it.

Thanks again.

 

[Beverly Howard [Ms-MVP/MobileDev]]

You might also go into the bios and turn off "floppy seek..." as well as
assure that it is not before the hard drive in the boot sequence.

Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]

 

[Papa]

Very good point. Thanks. I had the boot sequence in my BIOS set up to check
floppy first, CD-ROM drive second, and hard drive last. That's how I almost
always set it up in my systems. Isn't that the way it should be in case
something is wrong with the hard drive, preventing further boot progress?

But per your suggestion, I inserted a non-boot floppy, started the boot
sequence, went into my BIOS and changed the first boot device from "floppy"
to "disabled". Then I saved and got out of BIOS. At the end of the boot
(which was a lot faster) the green light was off.

Then I rebooted again without BIOS changes, and the light was still off at
the end of the boot. At this point I thought I was getting somewhere, After
that I rebooted again, went back into the BIOS, changed the first boot
device from "disabled" to "floppy", saved and got out of BIOS. At the
completion the light was, surprisingly, off. I booted again, without
changes. Same result, light was off. I tried it once more (cold boot this
time), and at the end of the boot the light was on. So I am now back to
square one without a clue as to the reason for this floppy drive behavior.
Guess I'll go buy a new floppy drive and see how it goes.

By the way, Floppy Seek has always been disabled in my BIOS.

 

[Papa]

Just finished installing a new floppy drive. Result - fast boot, green light
off, everything normal. The BIOS was also reset back to the original
setting: for boot sequence, i.e., check floppy first, followed by CD-ROM
drive, followed by C Drive.

Thank you, Beverly, Nick, and Richard. Great suggestions from all of you.

 

[Beverly Howard [Ms-MVP/MobileDev]]

Isn't that the way it should be in case something is wrong with the
hard drive, preventing further boot progress? <<

Common perception, but it's an addressable issue in the event of any
problems... for example if the boot HD fails, the floppy second picks up
and if the HD fails during boot, simply go to bios on restart and change
the setting when needed.

In the "old days" viri were passed primarily by shared floppies (only
the medium has changed with time ;-) so, it was advisable to have floppy
boot disabled so that you would not be infected if you had a data cd in
the drive and forgot it on shutdown or reboot, and I still reset the
sequence on any computer I am responsible for.

This might be one of those times that a piece of black tape is the
solution if it's only the light that offends... I tend to use the audio
indicator as the only method to detect floppy activity <grin>

Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]

 

[Nick Burns]

One suggestion, set your first boot device as the hard drive, and skip the
floppy and cd rom. If you have the need to boot from one of the others, you
can do it then. This will give you faster boot up.

 

[Beverly Howard [Ms-MVP/MobileDev]]

data CD in the drive <<

DOH!... memory failure, memory failure...

should have been "data floppy!"

Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]

 

[Guest]

Hi Papa,
I can't believe that a new floppy is all you did.
I think I have a similar problem that seems to have travelled across my
small LAN. I have a couple of Win 2000 and Win NT systems that boot up with
the floppy continuously accessed making lots of noise. This stops after
inserting a floppy. The NT system seems to have started this a few months
ago. In the last 4 weeks the other systems have now exhibited the same
problem. One of these systems has Linux on it. When booting to Linux, the
floppy problems go away. Same with another system that can boot to DOS. So
the probelm is clearly Windows software related - at least W2K and NT.

I have not been able to detect any virus per se. I suspect that an Windows
update may have instigated this problem. The other computers getting it later
than the first may also be a coincidence.

Anybody got more ideas?

Thanks,
Peter

 

[Guest]

My floppy (3.5 inch, 1.44 MB, drive A) always has the green busy light on at
the completion of a bootup. If I insert a disk, then remove it, the light
goes off and stays off unless I reinsert and use another floppy disk. In
other words, if I use a floppy disk just once, after that the green busy
light works normally in that the light goes on when floppy activity is going
on, and goes off when the activity ceases. I think this behavior is causing
my system to take much longer to boot. There is nothing wrong with the way
this floppy drive works. It can do everything (read, write, format) OK. My
other floppy drive (5.25 1.2 MB) does not exhibit this behavior.

My operating system is Windows XP Pro with SP2 and all critical updates
installed. The hardware includes a Soyo SY-KT600 Dragon Plus mobo, an 80 GB
WD hard drive, a 2 GB WD hard drive, a 3.5 inch 1.44 MB floppy drive, a 5.25
inch 1.2 MB floppy drive, an Nvidia 64 MB video card, a Sound Blaster sound
card, a D-Link wireless PCI card, 512 MB of memory, a CD-RW drive, and a CD
drive.

I am using AVG (with email checking disabled) as my AV program, AdAware as
my antispyware program, and a pop-up stopper from Panicware. Neither Norton,
nor any other additional AV software, is installed.

 

[Guest]

Hi Again Papa,
I am pretty sure that the problem is a recent update of AVG.
I have removed this program from an NT machine and a W2k machine. Both of
these have stopped exhibiting the constant read problem on boot up.

Would be interested if you confirm this.

Thanks,
Peter

 

[Papa]

Nope. That wasn't it. It was just an old defective floppy drive. As I
mentioned earlier, as soon as I replaced it with a new one, the problem was
solved.