Windows Forum

Ask something
Discussion Locked

A: Drive accesses randomly

0 helpful
15 replies

by paul681 1 view

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

We have a few Win98 and win2000 computers
that access the hard drive randomly.
The Win98 comp. seem to access the a: drive about 5 min after it boots up. This slows down the comp when it is being accessed and it will do it no matter what you are doing on the computer. It will do it even if you are not doing anything. There is no disk in the drive.
I have tried all kinds of "fixes" and none have worked.
I have tried: This is from http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article07-037

The following are possible solutions to this problem:

Clear the documents menu.
Clear Unwanted Entries from the Start Menu's Run Command.
Check for any viruses on your system (some users have reported the NEUVILLE virus)
Search your hard disk forall .PIF that point to programs on a floppy drive
Take out LocalLoadHigh=1 from your MSDOS.SYS file.
Check HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/CLSID in the Registry for any references to OCX's or DLL's referenced on the floppy.
Double-click on the System icon in Control panel, choose the Device Manager tab, and delete the GENERIC FLOPPY DISK entry (found under Disk drives). When Windows restarts, it'll re-detect the drive and the problem should go away.

Any one now of anything else to try??

15 replies

by thechas

Since you have already done some registry investigation, the next step is to search for A:
You will find a lot of keys that have a: for other than the A: drive, but if you delete all keys that reference the A: drive, you will reduce the amount of Windows searches of the A: drive.

Most of the keys that you will find will be from driver installations. I now copy the desired driver files onto my hard drives, and install drivers from there.

Next, check the settings of your anti-virus software. Many of these programs randomly check the A: drive.

Chas

by sgt_shultz

nah. betcha have outlook installed. betcha have archiving turned on. which is the default--thanx bill. Outlook/Tools/Options/Other/AutoArchiving), just turn it off.
'nother thing that might help with speed, look in FindFast for any indexes...deletethem, close and stop, remove FindFast from the startup folder...in that order. If no indexes show up, maybe create one, then delete it. the problem is 'orphan' indexes...'disconnected' index files that exist on the hard disk but are not being updated...that makes 'em counterproductive-actually slowing things down instead of speeding them up...

by ctmoore1998

What is being loaded during system startup, since it is Win98 use sys information system configuration to 'customize' your startup config, you can use this util to stop programs from starting at startup and determine if one of these is causing your problem. I would look esp at MS findfast if you MS office installed.

by cglrcng9

Findfast archiving is the usual culprit & I bet those boxes are made by Dell as I take care of 4 schools and every one of thos GX-1's do that w/ office 97 installed (until I deleted "FindSlow" from the start-up menus). The computer labs sounded likea bunch of chirping insects were let loose when no one else was in the room, about drove me crazy! Norton System Works does cause that situation also, but does only when it is actually running a utility...not when @ rest, those machines actually didit too about every 5 minutes @ rest.

Good Luck.

by 7nt

Open Regedit and navigate down to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer.

Look for a Binary value called NoDriveTypeAutoRun. Change its value to 95 00 00 00.

If there is no such value, you will have to add it. As always, you should back up your registry before making changes.

clover

by 7nt

I'm glad to see you reject the answer out of hand before bothering to ask what it does.

It does precisely what you want: stops programs randomly accessing the A drive.

clover

by paul681

Excuse me but the way I see it if I accept the answer
it closes the ques. That is why I did that.
And I'm not going to just change something in the Reg just because someone told me. I want to know what it does.
And after checking it and seeing the value is already there
I will reject this ques also as it did not help me.
Dont take Rejection so seriously

by 7nt

You can post a comment without accepting/rejecting a particular answer - just leave it not rated until satisfied one way or the other. I'm here to help people with problems. If I took rejection seriously, I wouldn't bother.

by paul681

You took offence that I rejected your answer and questioned it.
All our 98 systems have that value in the reg.
I have found out what the problem is and have corrected it.

Apparetly only for idiots like me didnt now you could leave a ques unrated.
so so sorry

This discussion is closed to new replies.