Are you sure it's not the hard drive spinning?

No the hard drive is much quieter than that on my Dim 400.  This is the floppy.  You know how it acts if you open a file from A:, remove the disk, then try to close the file in the program--it's trying to read or write something on the disk that isn't there and there's the clicking as it tries several times before stopping.  This is the same.  I watched last night and saw the green access light come on for the a: drive.  Is this activity normal for XP?

Your crystal ball has been receiving Dell offers in its email account and noted that all Dim 8300's seem to come with your choice of McAffee or Symantec.  Indeed, I selected the 90 day trial Symantec Internet Security.  I will review this tonight to verify. 

To me it is odd that systems this advanced still do not know whether there is a disk in drive A without giving it a spin and checking return codes.  Seems that years ago when doing backups or restores or installing multi-disk software or something that a later version of DOS knew whether I had changed disks.  If I did not, it would prompt me to change and press enter, if I had then it would start reading or writing to the new disk right away.  Guess that would be for either installing a new program, or restoring backups.  What was that?  I think it went away either at the very last DOS, or maybe with the first edition Win95.  There used to be some signal back from the floppy drive to tell the system that the latch had been opened and then closed, I think.  OS used this to infer if a drive had a disk and could then behave accordingly.  I remember thinking, "this is not progress" at the time.

 

While peering into my crystal ball, I see you are using some kind of Virus Scan software.....(Yea I've heard it before, don't give up my day job.) Seriously though many anti virus software scans floppy's on startup / shutdown. Look for the options in yours and see if there is an option to disable the floppy scan.

 

Hopes this helps

Dimension XPS Gen2
Win XP Home SP1
Intel P4 3.2Ghz HT 800mhz FSB
2Gb DDR3200 (400mhz) RAM
2 - 120Gb S-ATA HD 7200RPM 8Mb (non RAID currently) Intel ICH5R on-board RAID
2 - 60Gb ATA133 HD 7200RPM 2Mb (RAID 1) on a
Promise FastTrak TX2000 PCI UltraATA/133 RAID Card
128Mb Radeon 9800 Pro Video
SB Audigy2 Sound
CD-RW: 48X/48X/24X; DVD-ROM: 16X
DVD-RW DVD-4X/2.4X/2X CD-40X/24X/10X
Ext USB 100Mb ZipDrive
17" 1703FP LCD Monitor
Intel Pro 1000 Ethernet
56K PCI Data Fax Modem

 

Close....had same problem a while back when shutting off or starting my computer(s). Drove me batty until I figured it out. BTW I use McAfee Anti Virus and know that there is an option for scan for floppy on windows start / shutdown.....Just kinda guessing.

Dimension XPS Gen2
Win XP Home SP1
Intel P4 3.2Ghz HT 800mhz FSB
2Gb DDR3200 (400mhz) RAM
2 - 120Gb S-ATA HD 7200RPM 8Mb (non RAID currently) Intel ICH5R on-board RAID
2 - 60Gb ATA133 HD 7200RPM 2Mb (RAID 1) on a
Promise FastTrak TX2000 PCI UltraATA/133 RAID Card
128Mb Radeon 9800 Pro Video
SB Audigy2 Sound
CD-RW: 48X/48X/24X; DVD-ROM: 16X
DVD-RW DVD-4X/2.4X/2X CD-40X/24X/10X
Ext USB 100Mb ZipDrive
17" 1703FP LCD Monitor
Intel Pro 1000 Ethernet
56K PCI Data Fax Modem

Perhaps the other accounts were shut down while there was a floppy in A:. What happens if you put some innocuous floppy in the drive? Maybe if it's once satisfied, and the floppy is removed while the account's logged in, XP will lose interest in the thing.

Jim