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Erroneous recognition of a new floppy drive/mouse on boot
My daughter has an Inspiron, several years old, running Windows XP with all the updates. Recently, for no apparent reason, on boot the machine identifies as having found a new floppy disk. There is no floppy disk on the machine. It gives you the option of hitting F1 to bypass or another choice to install the floppy. ( If the installation is chosen, it eventually indicates it has found the necessary drivers and wants to install, however the Microsoft message comes up that these are not Microsoft approved and you shouldn't install, which isn't done.) After bypassing, the machine now indicates it has found a new mouse and then the same series of messages as the floppy. There is a mouse which works just fine with whatever is already installed. After that the boot is normal and everything works just fine. Bottom line, what is going on here and how do you get rid of these two erroneous recognitions??
fireberd
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33.3K Posts
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September 24th, 2011 04:00
It would appear that the CMOS memory (BIOS) has been reset and is erroneously reporting the floppy drive. This is easily fixed by entering the Setup (F2 where you get the Option for F1) and disabling the drive and removing it from the Boot drives.
I'm not sure about the mouse, but if that is after Windows starts it may just be a message about an updated mouse driver is available?
I can't link you to the Dell information on the Setup as you didn't provide the PC model number. But go to www.support.dell.com and you can access the manual for your specific model and the Setup information.
boomerk
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September 24th, 2011 15:00
Thanks for the quick response. I will see if that is the case with the CMOS memory although it will be a day or two before I will be able to get back over to her machine. Since she is not one who knows how to mess with things like that, if the setting has changed what would be a likely cause--stray voltage or something?? I will also check for an updated mouse.
RoHe
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September 24th, 2011 18:00
More than likely the motherboard battery holding BIOS settings in CMOS died so everything reverted to their factory default settings. The default setting for the floppy diskette drive controller is ON, even if the system doesn't have a floppy drive. So as fireberd mentioned, you need to run BIOS setup to turn it off again.
But you probably want to replace the battery first. Otherwise, you'll be changing that setting all the time. It's probably a 3-volt CR2032 lithium coin cell battery, ~$2-$3 in discount stores.
Look in your manual for instructions how to replace it (right-side-up!). Always unplug the PC and press/hold power button for ~15 sec before doing anything inside the case.
Ron
boomerk
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September 25th, 2011 17:00
Thanks guys. I did reset the BIOS to disable the floppy and remove it from the Boot drive. As for the mouse, I found the original Dell driver disk, and used it to "upgrade" the mouse driver, which during the install routine still brings up the Microsoft message that this is not Microsoft approved and you shouldn't install it--which I did anyway. Problem solved!!!