I finally decided to upgrade my 486 to Windows 95, and I've just remembered why I was so reluctant to do so in the first place. I have four floppy drives in my machine, and while the version of Windows 95 I'm using works with four drives, it hangs for a good, long while on startup by looking for a disk in the 360k drive (can't remember if I have that set as drive D or E at the moment). I suppose I could try to get around it by keeping a blank disk in the drive or something, but it would be better if I could just tell Windows 95 to skip looking at it until I actually double-click on it in Explorer. Is there any way to do that? I've searched for advice on Google, but none of the results I've found are really relevant to my problem.
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Is there a way to stop Windows 95 from probing all your drives on start-up?
- Thread starter jmetal88
- Start date
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Have you tried deleting VOLTRACK.VXD (actually just changing its name should do the trick)?
No, but I will soon. I'll let you know how it works out!
Agent Orange
Veteran Member
Might have something to do with the BOOT sequence. Go into your BIOS and ensure that it's looking for C, not A or B on startup.
Stone
10k Member
Not likely since it's WIN95 looking for the floppies which means C: has already booted the OS and the BIOS has finished looking for anything.
Agent Orange
Veteran Member
Yeah, that was way too easy - but I'd look anyway. If his box has 'four' floppies, the controller may have some configuration issues with WIN95. Would like to know what the controller is.
Stone
10k Member
FWIW, I used to have a similar issue with XP and the 1.44 B: floppy.
Agent Orange
Veteran Member
Here's a long shot but worth investigating. It looks like it might be a WIN95 configuration issue. Found this on a search:
ran across your web page and noticed the Unnecessary Floppy Access fixes and having fought this battle and Won, so I thought I'd add what I found. One place is under system > performance > file system > floppy un-check search for a floppy each time windows starts. But the Biggey, at least for me was, with tape drive backup SW installed there are 3 VXD's installed. If you run iosubsys from run you will see a list of VXD's. Unless you have a floppy/parallel port tape drive you should rename DRVWQ117.VXD and DRVWPPQT.VXD to .OLD as these sniff the floppy/printer ports causing the floppy access at startup. Another way is to search the Reg and *.INI files for references to these but the renaming is quicker. And Never access anything from W95/98 to a floppy, copy to a HD first.
Late edit:
This is a real stretch, but who knows . . .
"The problem you are having can be caused by Windows 95, in the start menu there is a button called documents
these are the documents that you have accessed. Office products that are set to autosave docs will try to save
to the disk. you can clear this list from the start menu, the settings button, the sub menu taskbar and startup then clicking on the start menu program tab and then clicking on the clear button in the document section. Hope this helps".
ran across your web page and noticed the Unnecessary Floppy Access fixes and having fought this battle and Won, so I thought I'd add what I found. One place is under system > performance > file system > floppy un-check search for a floppy each time windows starts. But the Biggey, at least for me was, with tape drive backup SW installed there are 3 VXD's installed. If you run iosubsys from run you will see a list of VXD's. Unless you have a floppy/parallel port tape drive you should rename DRVWQ117.VXD and DRVWPPQT.VXD to .OLD as these sniff the floppy/printer ports causing the floppy access at startup. Another way is to search the Reg and *.INI files for references to these but the renaming is quicker. And Never access anything from W95/98 to a floppy, copy to a HD first.
Late edit:
This is a real stretch, but who knows . . .
"The problem you are having can be caused by Windows 95, in the start menu there is a button called documents
these are the documents that you have accessed. Office products that are set to autosave docs will try to save
to the disk. you can clear this list from the start menu, the settings button, the sub menu taskbar and startup then clicking on the start menu program tab and then clicking on the clear button in the document section. Hope this helps".
Last edited:
SomeGuy
Veteran Member
At what point in the boot up process does it wait? Before Windows starts (that is, pressing f8 and going to dos still causes a wait), after the GUI starts? After the desktop appears?
Just out of curiosity, what kind of floppy controller card(s) are you using, and is Windows using BIOS fallback mode for either of them?
Just out of curiosity, what kind of floppy controller card(s) are you using, and is Windows using BIOS fallback mode for either of them?
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Well, I haven't cold-booted straight to Win9x for perhaps a decade or more. I always edit MSDOS.SYS to turn the BootGUI switch off, so I boot into the MS-DOS command prompt. To go to the GUI, I just type "win". I'd suggest the same in this case, so that you can observe where the delay actually occurs--booting into real-mode DOS or in the launching of the 32-bit GUI.
At least the results from applying my other suggestion indicates that it's not the despised volume-tracking VxD that's messing you up.
At least the results from applying my other suggestion indicates that it's not the despised volume-tracking VxD that's messing you up.
I'd have to open up the computer and look at the floppy controller again. It's one of the controllers that has all four drives on the same card, though (two connectors). AFAIK, Windows HAS to use BIOS fallback mode for the second two floppy drives, as it only natively supports the first two, but I only have reports on the internet to go by for that, as I'm not sure how to verify that first-hand.
The delay happens while the GUI is starting. If I press F8 and boot to DOS, there is no delay, but the delay that happens is during the blue Windows 95 start-up screen with the scrolling banner at the bottom. EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure about that now. Just did a boot straight to DOS and it still probed the drive this time, although I had a disk in it so it only probed it briefly.
Last edited:
This sounds like something I'll have to check out. Unfortunately, I'll have to re-install Windows 95 before I can try anything as I started having some disk access errors (I think it's a BIOS size limitation -- I posted in another thread asking if I'd run into this problem when I hit 504 MB on disk even though DOS was aware I had a 1.5 GB partition, and now it looks like I definitely did so I'm trying out a re-format and re-partition with EZ-Drive).
Starting the reinstall process: It seems pretty obvious that Windows 95 thinks my 360k disk drive is a hard drive, as the initial ScanDisk execution noted the blank disk in the drive and 'fixed' some errors. But, I know after the GUI starts it shows a floppy icon under My Computer, so I'm not sure where it decides the distinction is.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
I'm not completely clear on this. Is the delay occurring when you start DOS or the GUI?
Just for giggles, what happens when you tell the BIOS setup that there aren't any floppies?
Just for giggles, what happens when you tell the BIOS setup that there aren't any floppies?
I already do that, I think. The controller has its own BIOS that tells the OS I have 4 drives, and the only way to get it not to report any is to actually disconnect them.
I'll have to get back to you about where it's happening after I can test it again. I thought it was while starting the GUI, though.
Okay, confirmed now. Command prompt only via the F8 menu, NO delay. Full GUI start-up, long delay. Full GUI start-up with disk in the drive, short delay (not really a problem at all). I have not tried editing MSDOS.SYS yet.
Alright, I've had a chance to check this out now. I have no 'floppy' option under system > performance > file system, so that's not something I can do. Neither of those VXD files are present, either. Only one file under Documents, and it's on the hard drive.
Okay, further testing:
After typing 'exit' to exit MS-DOS mode following haven chosen it from the shut-down menu, the delay is also present.
Booting with the GUI disabled skips the delay, but the delay is present after I type WIN to enter the GUI. The GUI does not appear to probe drive A or B, but does probe D and E. E is where it gets stuck for a while. I am guessing this is because the drives are in BIOS compatibility mode (Windows does say they're running in MS-DOS compatibility mode) and the OS isn't sure they're not hard drives before it probes them?
Trying to access the drives from DOS with no disks in them is somewhat interesting:
1. Typing A: to access the 1.44 MB drive immediately results in "Not ready reading drive A"
2. Typing B: to access the 720 KB drive results in a significant delay before getting "Not ready reading drive B"
3. Typing D: to access the 1.2 MB drive immediately results in "Not ready reading drive D"
4. Typing E: to access the 360 KB drive results in a significant delay before getting "Not ready reading drive E"
So I'm not sure a proper solution exists for my case after reviewing all this. The easiest thing to do would appear to be just leaving a disk in the drive at all times.
After typing 'exit' to exit MS-DOS mode following haven chosen it from the shut-down menu, the delay is also present.
Booting with the GUI disabled skips the delay, but the delay is present after I type WIN to enter the GUI. The GUI does not appear to probe drive A or B, but does probe D and E. E is where it gets stuck for a while. I am guessing this is because the drives are in BIOS compatibility mode (Windows does say they're running in MS-DOS compatibility mode) and the OS isn't sure they're not hard drives before it probes them?
Trying to access the drives from DOS with no disks in them is somewhat interesting:
1. Typing A: to access the 1.44 MB drive immediately results in "Not ready reading drive A"
2. Typing B: to access the 720 KB drive results in a significant delay before getting "Not ready reading drive B"
3. Typing D: to access the 1.2 MB drive immediately results in "Not ready reading drive D"
4. Typing E: to access the 360 KB drive results in a significant delay before getting "Not ready reading drive E"
So I'm not sure a proper solution exists for my case after reviewing all this. The easiest thing to do would appear to be just leaving a disk in the drive at all times.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Do you, in fact, have 4 drives on this system? If not, why not pull/disable the FDC BIOS ROM? That is, unless this is something really strange like a secondary (port 37x) controller.