Hiding the floppy drive from Windows?

[Samantha]

I don't know that this is the correct forum, but here goes anyway.

I recently came across some advice to hide the floppy drive on Windows systems. It can be done with TweakUI or by changing a registry setting. The reason for doing so is that supposedly whenever you open Explorer or any dialog that involves file open/save operations, such as Send To, that Windows polls the floppy to see if it has a disk in it. Hiding the drive from Windows is supposed to speed the display of these dialogs.

I've been searching for some confirmation of this Windows behavior, but haven't found anything. I've never noticed floppy drive activity when opening Explorer or even browsing through directories. I'm assuming I'd see some if Windows was polling the drive, but maybe not.

Anyone have information on how Windows works when file browse/open/save dialogs are invoked?


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[Jerkymom]

I've been searching for some confirmation of this Windows behavior, but haven't found anything. I've never noticed floppy drive activity when opening Explorer or even browsing through directories. I'm assuming I'd see some if Windows was polling the drive, but maybe not.



Don't know about polling activity when opening Explorer, etc., but I replaced a couple of floppy drives I thought were bad because they kept flailing around all the time, empty and searching for I had no idea what, and I couldn't figure out why. Turns out they weren't defective at all - it was just Windows scanning the Documents menu and finding file references there from previous floppy accesses. I guess it was checking those files to see if they were still viable, and it seemed to happen about every 15 minutes, so I suppose Windows has some sort of schedule for keeping its eye on things. This only happened on other people's machines, as I always kept my Documents menu empty [compulsively neat Virgo here... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif] until I figured out how to kill it completely with Tweakui. Felt more than a little stupid when I finally found out what was happening, and 2 backup floppy drives lying around should be enough for anyone <giggle>!

I have noticed Windows seeking the floppy drive when I open a save dialog box only when the previous file I had saved was to the A: drive.
Kim

[teknicat]

if you want to completely hide the A drive from windows, then you may want to try policy editor, and it will remove it from send to menu, My computer and explorer, but the only paradox is that if you go file,open and type a:\ at the filename, you gain access to the a drive.

Anyway, you will find policy editor in your WIN95 or 98 CD. i used it for a little while on some pcs at work and it worked fine.

one thing i do advice: if you are going to play around with Policy Eitor, keep away from the "Run only allowed windows applications", because if you dont tell it which ones are allowed, you might find that no program will run. also, some programs, like Word, run applets as part of the features, and if this applets are not listed in "Run only allowed windows applications" option, then you may find that word may not work ok with some commands. READ THE README file so that u know what ur doing!

another program you can try can be found here: http://members.tripod.co.uk/CSFsoftware/index.htm
this website also has info on this program and you must check trhough it before experimenting with it on your machine!


Hope this may help you!

^_^

[mgh2468]

take a look at http://www.annoyances.org/win95/win95ann6.html under the "Stop Windows95 from Randomly Searching the Floppy Drive" section


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MGH

[Samantha]

Originally posted by Jerkymom:
I have noticed Windows seeking the floppy drive when I open a save dialog box [b]only when the previous file I had saved was to the A: drive[/b

Yes, it will in this case and some others, noted at Win* Annoyances. I still haven't found anything that confirms that Windows polls the A: drive whenever a file open/save dialog is invoked. But, there is someone swearing that when he hid the A drive on his and a few other folks PCs that it speeded up the dialogs considerably. I find it hard to believe that simply not having to display the A: in a list would make a noticeable difference.


Thanks for the replies.


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