Sometime over the last year, during the slow but sure erosion caused by using Windows Update at M$, both my Win 98 boxes seem to have lost their ability to access their floppy disks. I have swapped out for known good drives, but they dont work either.

There are no disabling settings in the BIOS, which I have reset and then re-configured, and it's still the same. It seems as if it's something that Win itself does to the drives.

Symptoms are - won't boot from drive A: even when designated first boot device with normal user access in BIOS, and always reports "Not ready" or "inaccessible" when looking at A: in Exploder.

Any one seen the same? Any ideas?