Floppydisc A Drive Has Gone Nuts.whirring Like Crazy...help?

[Gerry290]

Hi

FloppyDisc A Drive has gone Nuts.whirring like crazy...help?

I noticed this past few weeks, without me doing anything, and there is no disc in the drive

as I do not use 31/2 inch discs no more.... The drive turns on, and starts whirring and spinning

like crazy, and goes through cycles of this, on and off, on and off.

Its starting to drive me crazy!

Has anyone an idea, how I can stop this, or what the problem might be?

Sometimes I like to leave my PC on at night, if I am downloading something like music files over night,

but with the A drive whirring on and off like crazy all night, I am worried it might burn out, or heat up the PC

and cause a fire.

So any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Gerry

[bkk_mike]

If you no longer use the drive, the simple solution is to turn the PC off, open the case, and disconnect the power cable from the floppy drive. (unless of course, it's a laptop, where that would be a little more complicated.) You can always reconnect it if you need to use the floppy again. (flashing the bios?)

Thinking about why it might have started doing this...

The most likely cause of your symptoms is a hardware problem - i.e. something like the sensor that detects when a floppy is inserted is telling Windows there's a floppy there, and the OS then tries to spin up the floppy. If that's the case, then barring it being fixed by blowing the dust out, you'd need a new floppy drive (350 baht?), as buying a new one is almost certainly cheaper in the long run than trying to get it fixed.

Less likely, it may not be a hardware problem so you might want to run a virus scanner. If you don't have one, download the free versions of Avast or AVG. Avoid Norton.

There's also the remote possibility that some piece of software is trying to write to the A: drive. (I've had issues when I got an unexpected flashing LED on my USB thumb drive to indicate something was reading/writing to it. But it turned out that it was just Internet Explorer - I'd been dual-booting and because on XP the flash drive was the same drive letter as the hard disk I'd assigned for the IE cache under Vista, and IE somehow picked up the setting from the other OS...).

If it is software, the easiest way to find out what program is trying to write to the floppy, is probably to put a floppy in, and see what gets written.

[MrSnrang]

Pour resin down the slot then incinerate it. That's the proper exorcism technique for those evil little bastards.

[Gerry290]

hi bkk-mike

thanks for the generous information.

I think I will get me a big screw driver and disconnect it! end of problem!

I do not even have a floppy to try and test it, so bye bye floppy. As soon as I get my

3rd coffee in..(cannot function with a min if 3 strong black coffee in morning), I will get to work!

Cheers

Gerry

[TopDogger]

Sounds to me like its broken.

It will cost about B200 for a new one, hopefully your not an english teacher.

[southbot]

Hi. I have seen thiis problem many times when people have saved something to a floppy once, then the Windows system for whatever reason is trying to open it again.

Like, you accidentally save the default template for word on a floppy, then every time windoze starts it tries to look for it again.

Maybe check your msconfig to see if anything starting at load time may have reference to the floppy drive, usually A:

( start - run - mscofig - startup tab --- look for any references to a:\blahblah )

If you don't want to crack the box then you can disable the floppy drive in the BIOS on both desktops and notebooks/laptops.

Usually floppies just die silently. Maybe you have some gunk stuck in there. Whatever.

[Gerry290]

hopefully your not an english teacher.

I m worse!!! I am an IT Recruiter!!! LOL!!!

( system admin. network engineer, Field Service Engineer, Tech Support/helpdesk, MCSE types!!! mainly for SME Microsoft reseller type companies in Dublin... 10 years experience and 9% fee... great value!!! anyone know any UK based MS Resellers who want a good deal on fees, and certainly not the 2nd hand card sales man approach 90% of IT Recruiters who get us few good guys a very bad rep!!! I am going to see a handful of decent clients in the Uk very soon... sterling much nicer than euro!)

Thanks for all the helpful advice gentlemen!

Now does anyone want a Senior Field Service Engineer MCSE job in Dublin city center??? Small high quality MS Partner, needs one right now... will pay up to euro 45,000! Roll on up Roll on Up!!!)

Down Computer Futures!!!

[TopDogger]

hopefully your not an english teacher.

I m worse!!! I am an IT Recruiter!!! LOL!!!

( system admin. network engineer, Field Service Engineer, Tech Support/helpdesk, MCSE types!!! mainly for SME Microsoft reseller type companies in Dublin... 10 years experience and 9% fee... great value!!! anyone know any UK based MS Resellers who want a good deal on fees, and certainly not the 2nd hand card sales man approach 90% of IT Recruiters who get us few good guys a very bad rep!!! I am going to see a handful of decent clients in the Uk very soon... sterling much nicer than euro!)

Thanks for all the helpful advice gentlemen!

Now does anyone want a Senior Field Service Engineer MCSE job in Dublin city center??? Small high quality MS Partner, needs one right now... will pay up to euro 45,000! Roll on up Roll on Up!!!)

Down Computer Futures!!!

And your asking for help on a broken 3.5" floppy drive on an internet forum in Thailand?

[Gerry290]

And your asking for help on a broken 3.5" floppy drive on an internet forum in Thailand?

LOL! I never claimed to know how to fix computers, I just find the guys who can!

Anyway us IT recruiters are not known for our brains! LOL!!!

[bkk_mike]

I think the surprise isn't that an IT recruiter doesn't know about computers. (Those of us who work with computers, and have used agencies, would probably be more surprised if you did.)

I think the surprise is that you are apparently in Dublin. (rather far from Thailand)

[Gerry290]

Hi Bkk-Mike

That has a rather offensive tone you post about me being a computer, I am a bit suprised and indeed disappointed in the tone and attitude you display towards me.

No I am not a computer engineer, I do not know how to build or configure a server for example, do Active Directory, or work Citirx or Vmware.

See that is not my job..my job is a Recruiter, I find as a general term"IT Engineers" of various levels for my clients, mainly MS IT Partners.

If your trying to lump me in with the type of MSB, Progressive, <deleted> you maybe have experience of in the UK, you are very very wrong.

I m 10 years in the business, have a very solid reputation, and work with the same clients over and over.

I m a bit suprised too...

I am not sure how you draw the conclusion that I am in Dublin right now?

You seem to know a bit about computers, however maybe not as much as you like to profess, as my IP address is a TT&T Maxnet one.

i think pattaya where I sit right now, is a long way from dublin too.

Mike do yourself a favour and grow up a bit.

I think you pretty much let yourself down in front of the whole forum, with your tone and attitude which I find rather insulting and offensive.

As for how you think I am in Dublin right now???

[bkk_mike]

No offence meant. I just got the impression from your earlier post that you were in Dublin.

(And I think that was what TopDogger was getting at as well.)

You obviously knew that you were in Pattaya, and read it as a comment on your working in computers.

Rather than as a comment on you apparently being in Dublin.

And as for my comment on recruiters. I have dealt with a lot of recruiters in London, and I don't remember any of them being particularly technical. (Maybe in Dublin they need to know a little about what they're recruiting people for - in London, I get the feeling they just do searches on keywords on people's CVs. - I still get weekly emails asking me if I'm interested in jobs working on Murex, despite the fact that I haven't touched a Murex system in over 10 years, and it's 2 years since the last time I put my CV out).

[Gerry290]

Due to the "miracle" of VOIP, (thank God!!! ) my irish (dublin area code phone number) once the broadband is strong, I can be based anywhere in the world. I actually switched business phone to VOIP over 6 months, before I considering move here, so regular clients were use the new number. (90% of the work is done over phone and email anyway). but all recruitment work I do is 80% in dublin with irish IT Engineers.

Now uee to this VOIP freedom, can live over here, purse my muay thai training, and have a great life style.

yes straight up. alot of IT Recruiters are not very good, they get us who are more professional and less short term "commission grabers" a bad name. Yeah that key word software that is picking up Murex... you would think the idiots, would at least take 10 secs to speed read your cv, instead of bulk emailing all murex key words CVs.

You do not have to a technical at all, but an understanding of the buzz words, industry speak, which companies are players in the nice, etc is very helpful. As an IT Recruiter the more experienced of us, would be techie knowledge on the same approx level as a sales executive for an IT Miscosoft Reseller , he would know the industry speak, but pulls in a Pre Sales or IT engineer for the technical spec of a bid on an IT network etc etc..

Thats why I 90% stay with MCSE, IT Engineer, System Admin, tech Support level 1 - 3. so I know the techie speak, and I can usually tell my a few questions and studying the CV, is the candidate worth presenting to client or not.

yes bloody emails and forums... sometimes intended jokes etc come across as a serious rant!!!

Cheers

gerry

[Thanh-BKK]

Hello

The floppy drive starting itself every then and when can be caused by the anti-virus software - that was the case for me. Whenever the anti-virus (Norton in my case) started doing some scanning in the background (which it was set to do "if computer idle") it started with the boot sectors - and those obviously include the floppy drives. Since there was no floppy in them (i had two floppy drives in my machine) it tried this several times - with the same effect, both floppies starting to spin, run fora while, stop, and start doing it again. It got so annoying that i simply disabled "floppy drive scan" in Norton.

Now i'm no longer using Norton but Avast, it too scans the floppy (now i've got only one of them) but at least it's intelligent enough to stop after the first try when there is no diskette in the drive.

Best regards.....

Thanh