Howdy,
Brian Livingston (infoworld writer) has some info on the floppy driver. I do not yet had a hard drive so I can not test this out:
"Sloppy drivers for floppy drives
Windows 95 and 98 users are still having problems with floppy drives. For example, opening a dialog box for My Computer, File Open, or File Save-As can take forever while Windows checks for a (nonexistent) floppy disk in the A: drive.
Nevell Greenough reports that a poorly implemented floppy driver can cause this behavior. Ironically, such programs as Microsoft Backup and Seagate Software's Direct Tape Access install this driver, even when you use a non-floppy device, such as a SCSI or parallel device, for backup. The driver in question is named Drvwq117.vxd. If you use a tape drive that's attached to a floppy connector, you're stuck with this driver, and you'll just have to live with it. But if not, you can clear up the problem by getting rid of the file.
To do this, boot to DOS (hold down Ctrl after the memory self-test, then select Command Prompt) and rename the file to Drvwq117vxd.old or whatever you like. The file should be found in C:\Windows\System\IOsubsys. There are many references to other problems with this driver. Search on the driver name at your favorite search engine if you're having floppy difficulties."
