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Windows Explorer keeps seeking floppy disk

Anonymous
2020-01-30T06:11:28+00:00

Hi

I'm running Windows 7 x64 SP1 Ultimate Edition on my Dell Optiplex 960 machine. All windows updates applied.

Recently a strange phenomenon happens all the time. Whenever I click "start -> computer" to open the windows file explorer, the floppy drive LED turns on with a loud disk reading noise, which is extremely annoying. It seems that the Windows Explorer is trying to access/seek or search for the floppydisk. However there's no floppy in the drive.

At first I thought this must be due to some broken recent file links or broken entries in registry. But cleaning all of these does not help. I then turned off my anti virus protection, also useless. The annoyance remains. 

What's the most strange, this annoying phenomenon can also be reproduced even when I start Windows in the minimum safe mode. I then went back to normal mode and loaded the procmon in Sysinternals Suite to see which program actually caused it. It's the windows shell, explorer.exe that is always trying to access the floppy drive whenever I click start->computer.

Perhaps it's a bug in the current Windows 7 system that still not fixed?>??

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-04-07T09:05:06+00:00

    CDTQ, Did you sort this?

    Since updates mine is doing the same.

    On boot up, opening a browser, bizarre!

    Anyway, till I find the answer I have disabled it via device manager.

    Easy to re enable if needed rather than having to faff about with F2. 

    Canadian Tech, why are you so obsessed with getting CD to disable his drive?

    It's their choice, and mine, to use a floppy or not.

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    If you don't have a relevant answer, don't reply.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-02-01T17:41:44+00:00

    No.  I use floppy drive frequently and would not like to disable it in BIOS.

    Is there any other way to solve the problem.

    Any official patch or bugfix from Microsoft??

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  3. LemP 74,930 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2020-02-01T18:21:39+00:00

    Perhaps it's the File Indexing service, although AFAIK, Windows Search (the indexing service) shouldn't be triggered by merely opening "Computer."

    Click Start, type Indexing Options in the Search box, and press Enter. 

    Inspect the list of locations to be indexed and if any are on the A: drive, remove them.  You may have to click "Modify" and drill down to see some subfolders.

    Back in XP and Vista, there were recommendations to completely turn off indexing in order to improve system performance.  You might as well do that and see if it removes the unwanted accessing of your floppy drive.  Seehttps://4sysops.com/archives/turn-off-indexing-in-windows-7-and-windows-vista/

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-01-31T13:10:00+00:00

    +1 on that.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-01-31T09:57:04+00:00

    It is highly unlikely you use floppy disks. 

    Open the CMOS (F2 at startup)

    Find the disk section

    Disable the floppy drive.

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