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Floppy disk drive starts randomly 3

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maborouk

Technical User
Aug 13, 2001
36
GB
Can anyone explain why for no reason the floppy disc drive is activated with no disc in it. It happened tonight and then a Find Fast message came up saying "Find fast encountered Int error". After that lots of random error messages came up and I had to shut down the computer.
What is happening?
 
I can't explain the random error messages but i can explain the random floppy disc drive activity. We experienced the same behaviour on our PC's that used to have Microsoft Office installed on them. When we stopped Fast Find (a Microsoft Office component) from loading at startup this random activity stoped.

I have never had the need to use Fast Find but I would guess that the activity is caused by it recreating an index of the discs on your computer
 
maborouk

I agree with jono2002. It ratchetted my floppy for a while.

Here is the KB article on how to get rid of it.

excerpt

Disabling the Find Fast Indexer
CAUTION: If you remove the Indexer from the Startup folder and if you
do not follow these steps, you may receive errors and incorrect search
results in the Find File and Open dialog boxes.

To disable the Find Fast Indexer, use these steps:
Open Control Panel and double-click Find Fast.

Use the Delete Index command on the Index menu to delete any existing
indexes.

Click Close And Stop on the Index menu to completely quit Find Fast.

Remove Find Fast from the Startup group or folder.

Other items: if still no joy.

Delete items in Recent file folder, often they retain shortcuts to the floppy that are not required.
Search HD for *.lnk files that point to the the floppy (a:\) drive. Right click on shortcut and choose properties, references to the floppy will show up in Target command line. Also some AV applications scan floppy drive and have options you can set to prevent excessive reads.

GL smitee
 
Thanks to both of you for your help.I think I am almost there, I followed instructions in KB article regarding " Disabling the Find fast Indexer"points 1 to 3 but how do I 4.Remove Find Fast from the Startup group and folder?
 
maborouk

C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp
C:\WINDOWS\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp smitee
 
Thanks smitee, went in to above but could find no ref to Find Fast. I looked under Microsoft small business tools and other areas, but could not see.
When back into Find Fast and when I opened Index menu, there was a tick next to "run when log in", so I removed this. Does this mean that it will not load at Start Up?
 
maborouk

You shouldn't have the applet in Control Panel after removal..Try the following.
Please leave post if you want URL of originating article. Leave E-Mail address

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can remove Find Fast using your Office CD, but THIS IS recommended.

1) Reboot your computer in MS-DOS Mode.
2) Delete the FindFast.CPL file from c:\windows\system3) Delete the shortcut (.lnk) under c:\windows\start menu\programs\startup4) Delete the FindFast.EXE file from c:\progra~1\micros~1\office\
5) It's important to delete the find fast databases (c:\ff*.*).
6) You can also safely delete FFNT.exe, FFSetup.dll, FFService.dll, and FFast_bb.dll if you have them.

Feel free to check out the ffastlog.txt (which is the Find Fast error log). It's a +h[idden] file under c:\windows\system\.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- smitee
 
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