You can disable the floppy drive in device manager.

Already tried. Keep looking for the floppy. The bios does not allow disabling the floppy drive.
In any case I avoid, as I still use it.

It sounds very abnormal to me. Is there any chance you could reinstall without the floppy drive connected?

I don't know any exact registry keys to check, but I think Windows may maintain a list of places to check when it needs files during device or driver installation, and I'm wondering if somehow A:\ ended up at the beginning of that list instead of C:\WINNT or C:\WINDOWS, etc. Or maybe A:\ is in the PATH variable. I suppose you could use RegEdit to search for references to A:\.

Here's another idea:

A. If you install Windows 2000 from a local hard disk, Windows 2000 defaults to the first installed CD-ROM drive letter when you […]
Show full quote

A. If you install Windows 2000 from a local hard disk, Windows 2000 defaults to the first installed CD-ROM drive letter when you make any changes to your installation that require files from the installation source. This does not occur if installation was completed using a network share. This means whenever it wants to add a component you have to correct the installation location.

For example, if you install Windows 2000 from D:\2128\I386 (a local hard disk), Windows 2000 will default to E:\2128\I386 when the source files are needed (where E is the first CD-ROM drive letter).

To fix the problem perform the following:

Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)
Move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup
Double click on SourcePath and change to the correct location. Click OK.
Now move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
Double click on SourcePath and change to the correct location. Click OK.
Move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup
Double click on SourctPath and change to the correct drive letter, e.g. C: (it must have a I386 structure)
Close the registry editor

https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/de … ion-not-correct

NarakuITA wrote on 2022-09-13, 17:19:

Already tried. Keep looking for the floppy. The bios does not allow disabling the floppy drive.
In any case I avoid, as I still use it.

The device manager has nothing to do with BIOS. And the floppy device can easily be enabled/disabled on the fly.

Ringding wrote on 2022-09-14, 08:42:

NarakuITA wrote on 2022-09-13, 17:19:

Already tried. Keep looking for the floppy. The bios does not allow disabling the floppy drive.
In any case I avoid, as I still use it.

The device manager has nothing to do with BIOS. And the floppy device can easily be enabled/disabled on the fly.

As just said, already tried. The bios was just additional information.

So it accesses the floppy drive when it’s disabled in device manager? This is indeed strange.

Cosmic wrote on 2022-09-13, 20:33:

It sounds very abnormal to me. Is there any chance you could reinstall without the floppy drive connected? […]
Show full quote

It sounds very abnormal to me. Is there any chance you could reinstall without the floppy drive connected?

I don't know any exact registry keys to check, but I think Windows may maintain a list of places to check when it needs files during device or driver installation, and I'm wondering if somehow A:\ ended up at the beginning of that list instead of C:\WINNT or C:\WINDOWS, etc. Or maybe A:\ is in the PATH variable. I suppose you could use RegEdit to search for references to A:\.

Here's another idea:

A. If you install Windows 2000 from a local hard disk, Windows 2000 defaults to the first installed CD-ROM drive letter when you […]
Show full quote

A. If you install Windows 2000 from a local hard disk, Windows 2000 defaults to the first installed CD-ROM drive letter when you make any changes to your installation that require files from the installation source. This does not occur if installation was completed using a network share. This means whenever it wants to add a component you have to correct the installation location.

For example, if you install Windows 2000 from D:\2128\I386 (a local hard disk), Windows 2000 will default to E:\2128\I386 when the source files are needed (where E is the first CD-ROM drive letter).

To fix the problem perform the following:

Start the registry editor (regedit.exe)
Move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup
Double click on SourcePath and change to the correct location. Click OK.
Now move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
Double click on SourcePath and change to the correct location. Click OK.
Move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup
Double click on SourctPath and change to the correct drive letter, e.g. C: (it must have a I386 structure)
Close the registry editor

https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/de … ion-not-correct

Nothing, the search finds nothing.
The suggestion to modify the registry was not successful, unfortunately ...

Ringding wrote on 2022-09-14, 11:31:

So it accesses the floppy drive when it’s disabled in device manager? This is indeed strange.

Yes, very strange and yet even if disabled, it always looks for the floppy.
I don't understand how to fix this damn problem!

It doesn't take long to reinstall if you can never figure it out.

When I had this issue I would just put a disk in the drive and then got a file xyz123 not found error turned out to be a missing file from a winmodem that it kept freaking out over.