Introduction | Windows |
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At some point, you may have told Windows to check for something on the A drive - and never told it to stop looking. Correcting this is easy: the next time Windows accesses your floppy drive, pop a disk into the drive. Double-click the icon for drive A. Then close the window, double-click on the C icon, and remove the floppy disk.
Your antivirus software may be configured to scan drive A automatically, whether there is a disk in it or not. To check Norton AntiVirus, for example, click the Options button. On the Scanner tab, click the Advanced button. Uncheck All removable drives. Click ok twice.
Another possibility is that something on your recent documents list makes Windows check the A drive. Don't bother to track down the perpetrator - just wipe out everything in that folder (you won't lose any data). To do this, right-click the Taskbar, select Properties. Click the Start Menu Programs tab, choose Clear in the 'Documents menu' box, then click ok.
Desktop shortcuts pointing to a file or program on the A drive can also trigger this pointless access. Select Desktop in Windows Explorer. Choose Start, Find, Files or Folders. In the Named field, enter *.lnk, *.pif. Then, for the Containing Text field, enter 'A:' and click Find Now. Delete all of the shortcuts you find, or move them either off the Explorer Desktop or out of the Start menu.
If you use Microsoft Office 97, the FindFast utility could be causing the problem. To find out select Start, Settings, Control Panel, and then double-click the FindFast icon. Once the applet is up, see whether drive A is on the list of indexes. If it is, highlight it and select Index, Delete Index. Click ok twice, then close FindFast and the Control Panel. You can find more tips at www.annoyances.org/cgi-bin/ce-showtopic/005_037.