That sounds familiar 😀

The installation also pauses a few times looking for the floppy drive.

The only solution that worked for me was connecting a floppy drive 😵

Just a thought but I'd check for any BIOS settings related to floppy controllers or resources being reserved for them.

I have a floppy drive I could put in,but I don't want/need a floppy there, ha. The floppy controller is disabled in bios. Maybe windows treats a valid floppy controller w/ no drives differently than no floppy controller.

Yea I once tried all the permutations of the drive setting as well as the controller setting. I'm sure there is a way, but it was just so much easier to just hook up a floppy drive 🤣

Or just ignore the "Drive A is using a compatibility mode filesystem". I don't think it has any impact.

There is usually an option in the BIOS setup under "Advanced BIOS Settings" called "Report No FDD for OS/Windows", this setting should solve the issue.

Skyscraper wrote:

There is usually an option in the BIOS setup under "Advanced BIOS Settings" called "Report No FDD for OS/Windows", this setting should solve the issue.

^ this. Also disabling the FDD controller in bios will help.

At least on a board I tried, don't ask me which one though, such an option wasn't in the BIOS. And no, disabling the FDD controller and / or the floppy entries didn't work either. But this doesn't affect all boards which is odd.

Skyscraper wrote:

There is usually an option in the BIOS setup under "Advanced BIOS Settings" called "Report No FDD for OS/Windows", this setting should solve the issue.

I have mixed result with that option in some motherboards,
while most of them really tell win 9x to not shown any floppy in explorer or device manager,
on some other motherboard it just a bogus setting without any effect on win 9x (the non-existent floppy still shown),
but I also encounter crash at win 9x start up when the said setting are enabled!

Can you just disable the device in device manager?

Try this:

- Right click My Computer.
- Performance Tab.
- File System button.
- Floppy Disk Tab.
- Uncheck "Search for new floppy disk drives each time your computer starts".

This is in Windows Millennium, I don't have a 98SE computer turned on right now.

I found an additional option in the BIOS: Report no FDD for Win 95. (Which is somehow necessary, with floppy controller disabled, and both floppy options set to none.) Now in Windows 98 is shows up as 'Removable disk A'. But it no longer has the long pause if you click on it, it just says its not formatted. Window REALLY wants a floppy drive.

I did go into performance/filesystem/ floppy drives, and unchecked 'search for new floppy drives.' And it's still hanging onto the A drive like a baby with its pacifier. At least the 20 second delay is gone. I've told this computer it doesn't have a floppy drive in 4 different places. This is quite silly.

The message is clear: I guess I need to put that floppy drive in.

Hey man, I used to have the same issue for years. Here's how I solved it:

Dealing with non-existent floppy drives in Win9x

carangil wrote:

I found an additional option in the BIOS: Report no FDD for Win 95. (Which is somehow necessary, with floppy controller disabled, and both floppy options set to none.) Now in Windows 98 is shows up as 'Removable disk A'. But it no longer has the long pause if you click on it, it just says its not formatted. Window REALLY wants a floppy drive.

I did go into performance/filesystem/ floppy drives, and unchecked 'search for new floppy drives.' And it's still hanging onto the A drive like a baby with its pacifier. At least the 20 second delay is gone. I've told this computer it doesn't have a floppy drive in 4 different places. This is quite silly.

The message is clear: I guess I need to put that floppy drive in.

Disable the Floppy disk controller in BIOS and the icon should go away. You can usually find the option under "Integrated Peripherals" -> "Onboard FDC Controller" - and you set that to disabled. It can also be called "Diskette Controller, Floppy Controller" and alike.

Nah, sometimes even that won't work. Drive Letter Manipulator worked really well in my case.

I've seen a disabled floppy controller cause 98se setup to BSOD. Something specific to that motherboard. The floppy issue is a strange one.

This problem used to be well known and there were programs to fix it. Sadly, I do not remember what these programs were called or what they did.

Perhaps you could "dummy" a drive to A: just to stop the system lagging and crashing. Maybe try adding
SUBST A: C:\DUMYFLPY
to Autoexec.bat which would map that directory to the A: drive. If this got rid of the delay you could then use something like X-Setup to hide the drive icon in My Computer. Software would still look in that "drive" if it wanted to access it but the icon would not appear for it.

Edit: You would have to make that directory or it wouldn't work. You can leave it empty though.

swaaye wrote:

I've seen a disabled floppy controller cause 98se setup to BSOD. Something specific to that motherboard. The floppy issue is a strange one.

I've encountered that problem myself - and the reverse - floppy disk controller enabled in bios, but drive a and b set to none causing bsods when installing 98 on some intel 440 / 810 chipset boards as well as some slot 1 via boards.