It's time for another edition of stuff that bugs me. 



The last time around, most of the stupid tech tricks revolved around software. This time around, we have a mix of software and hardware stupidities. 







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What Floppy?

Let's start with a message I've seen frequently when booting a new system: 

Floppy Disk Fail 0 

My first thought when I see this error is—WTF (What The Floppy)? 



In the era of Vista, Linux, MacOS, and USB flash memory keys, I always disable the floppy disk controller on first system boot, because I never use floppies, unless it's forced on me. 



Quite a few motherboard BIOS setups, though, allow the floppy disk drive to be enabled, even if the floppy disk controller is disabled. So you'll see on the primary setup screen: 



Legacy Diskette A: [1.44MB] 

So the drive can be enabled, even if the controller is not. What's even more stupid is that the BIOS sees this as a floppy drive that's not present. 



The good news is that some of the newer motherboards no longer show a floppy disk controller in the "onboard devices" setup screen. You just turn it off in the main BIOS setup screen. Continued...