Why is my machine continually 'rattling its cage' i.e. checking through the removable drives incessantly. I cannot do much without a noisy and lengthy delay whilst the machine goes through the full gamut of removable drives. It affects most M$ and third-party software.

For example when I empty the recycle bin it checks through every removable drive, A, E, and F - even though they are of course usually empty - before completing the task. The drives are sometimes rattling for ages.

I have checked the BIOS (American MegaTrends) and there is nothing untoward there.

Any ideas, anyone?

Try going into System properties/performance tab/file system button and floppy disk tab and if the entry there is checked, uncheck it. If you do not know how to get to System properties, right click on M Computer and choose Properties.

plonkeroo :

Agreed.

Some AntiVirus software also defaults to checking the FDD (among others) for "boot viruses" (e.g. Norton/Symantec) even if there is no disk(s). This can be turned off in the associated Options (somewhere?).

Also, you might want to clear in the Taskbar "Recent Documents". I don't clearly remember (since I am using VM right now), but I think stoopid Windows checks this for some reason...

Thank you each for valuable comment.

I went into SysProperties > Performance and saw that all removable drives (A, E and F) were running in "MSDos compatibility mode". Didn't have a clue what that boiled down to so looked up help. Not helpful - in fact I have found that most 'help' files are a waste of space. No intelligible instructions at all on how to remove this compatibility mode.

So looked up the removable drives. Saw that I had 'DMA' (?) ticked against each. Unticked them, rebooted. Problem not solved.

Next port of call the File System tabs. Saw that 'Enable write-behind (?) cacheing on all removable drives' was enabled. Unticked it and rebooted.

So problem still not solved! So further comments welcome!

If your OS/apps/spyware/etc keeps checking your HDs/floppies/removable drives/etc, this may help:
http://www.mdgx.com/newtip2.htm#ANNOY

HTH

I believe if the drives are not recognized in the BIOS and/or are turned off in the BIOS they will run in compatability mode. When I diasble my floppy drive in BIOS, it then runs that way. You may also have a driver problem where windows is not using the correct driver for the device.

I am not worried about the floppy drive being checked when rebooting - that's a very useful feature for getting out of a few scrapes - it's this ongoing 'msdos compatibilty mode' activity that worries me because it creates unnecessary and long delays and makes life too complicated! In case it's relevant here are my main SYSTEM.INI settings.

All I need to know is how to exit 'ms compatibility mode'! Helpp!

plonkeroo, I believe your problem may be this:
Floppy Drive Is Accessed When You Open My Computer
It's explained over here but only kinda:
How to Test Autorun.inf Files
What is going on despite MS-DOS Compatiablilty mode is that the drives are being tested to see if they contain an Autorun.inf file that needs to be running. But there is a failure on some level within the article as the value 95 equates to 5f hex or 01011111 binary - and bit 7 is NOT set but the article states plainly that it is, which confuses me no small part. 223 or df hex (11011111) possibly doesn't work any better than 95 because the bit 7 device hasn't been defined yet which makes it all a moot point anyway but why cause the confusion in the first place? We aren't having enough fun as it is?

At any rate, the value 95 is supposed to turn off autorun for all drives except CDROM, give it a try. I found mine messed up and driving me nutso (empty A: drive) a couple of weeks ago, and I still don't how it happened to be altered like that.

Only advice I have to avoid MS-DOS Compatiablity mode is to load the drives with media so that Windows can access them at boot up and determine actual access speeds. If they can operate above MS-DOS speeds, I'm thinking Windows will give them the green light for 32 bit speed and good things will then happen. I don't believe I caught the media types for your drives e and f, zip?.

@submix8c
Windows will check recent documents quite often and if a shortcut to any of the removable drives is in there, all manner of buzzing might be likely. Run Box history might cause it too. Start Menu|Settings|Taskbar & Start Menu|Start Menu Programs tab, clear the Documents Menu button for this relief.

Lee

@ Lee - Thanks - I'll give 95 00 00 00 a try. Hope it sorts out the CD drives at the same time!

shadetree :

Good info above ... may help plonkeroo (even though other thing may be in MSHDC.INF settings for LBA-mode drives; do a search on the subject; very little shows in "Google"...).

-- Yeah, was aware of that, hence the post I had made @plonkeroo as a potential "annoyance" solution, not as a question...

All MS OS's I have used/installed, etc.
- Dos3.x thru Dos 6.22
- Win2.x thru WFW3.11
- WinNT3.5/4.0
- Win95 (all versions), Win98 (FE+SE), WinME
- Win2k Pro/Server
- WinXP Home/Pro
- Win2k3
And... Most IBM Mainframe stuff up to 1999

edit: I do not consider myself an "expert"...