Symptom
When an IBM USB floppy diskette drive is plugged into the USB port and the system is restarted, My Computer and Device Manager will display an extra floppy diskette drive with an actual drive letter (E:). If the client goes into Device Manager, selects View, then Devices by Connection, the onboard Floppy Controller will show two floppy drives attached. One of the diskette drives is invalid and takes on the drive letter E:. If the client clicks on the phony diskette drive, they will get the message "Please insert disk".

Affected configuration
Any of the following systems running Microsoft Windows XP with Service pack 2, configured with an IBM USB floppy diskette drive:

• IBM IntelliStation M Pro (type 6219)
• IBM NetVista M41 (type 6794)

Solution
The BIOS falsely detects two floppy diskette drives connected to the onboard floppy controller, when a USB floppy diskette drive is attached to any USB port on the system. Just use the floppy diskette drive with the drive letter B: assigned to it. Ignore the floppy diskette drive with the E: designation.