>>>>>>>>TODAY

It appears that I have solved my problem. It wasn't easy to find, but once I did, it was one of those "you've got to be kidding" problems.

I started off today with a little reassessing. I checked other MS Office applications. Front Page and Powerpoint performed floppy disk writes normally, so the problem was restricted to floppy disk writes in only Word and Excel. At the recommendation of a list member, I rescanned for viruses after eliminating all exclusions. Nothing found. I uninstalled MS Office 2000 completely including all "leftover" directories and registry entries. I updated Internet Explorer from 5.01 to 6 (figured it couldn't hurt). I defragged the hard disk and then reinstalled MS Office. Holding my breath, I tried a floppy disk write from Excel. The little light didn't go off. Argh!

Not quite knowing what to do next, I did a Ctrl-Alt-Del and checked what was running. Going down the list, I could account for all entries but one. An application called FSFMON. I did a google search for FSFMON and it turned up nothing. I decided to kill it just for giggles. I then went into Excel and performed a floppy disk write with fingers crossed and breath held. The light went out! I searched for FSFMON on the C drive and found an executable in the program directory for a Rio MP3 player's software that was installed. I disabled FSFMON's startup in MSCONFIG, rebooted and tried again. Both Word and Excel functioned as they are supposed to. PROBLEM SOLVED. I don't quite understand it, but that seems to be the case quite frequently when working with Windows PC's.

Oh, well. On to the next one...

Steve Polatas

>>>>>>>YESTERDAY

Group,

This one has got me battered and bloodied. I have a Dell Optiplex running Windows 98 with Office 2000 installed. When I perform a floppy disk write from an Office app (Word or Excel), the file is written but the floppy drive is not released (drive light stays on). If you pop out the disk at this point, the drive does the "rachety grind". The only way to release the drive is to reboot the computer or remove the floppy disk controller from the device list.

Here's the confusing part; if I perform a floppy disk write from a non-office app like Notepad, Wordpad, etc., the drive behaves normally. Floppy drive file access (reads) function normally (light goes off when complete) in all applications (including Office). If I boot to Safe Mode, go into Word or Excel and perform a floppy disk write, everything is fine.

What I've done so far... I have scanned machine for viruses. I have performed a "repair" of MS Office (from the install screen). I have installed MS Office Service Pack 1a. I have copied from a functional PC all system files that appeared to be related to the floppy disk system including IOS.VXD. I have reinstalled Windows. I have scoured the Web for any references to similar behavior. All have got me nowhere.

The only other thing that I can think of to try is an uninstall/reinstall of Office 2000, but I don't hold much hope for that making any difference in light of what I've already tried.

It is with this predicament that I come to the group. Anyone out there have any ideas or insights as to a cause for this machine's strange behavior?

Please respond to me directly as well as to the group with anything if you would please.

Thanks, I'm going to tend to my wounds now and prepare for more battling tomorrow.

Steve Polatas...

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