The floppy disk drive is missing from the My Computer folder

In Windows XP, you may experience the following issues:

• The floppy disk drive does not appear in the My Computer folder. You may also notice that the floppy disk drive is listed as the number 37 or 39 in the Device Manager.
• The floppy disk drive does not work in safe mode or in normal mode. The floppy disk drive is detected by Device Manager, but you receive the following error message:
  Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)

These issues may occur if there are corrupted or incorrect keys in the registry.

To resolve these issues, delete the corrupted or incorrect registry keys. To delete the keys, follow these steps:

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Run box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate the following registry key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E980-E325 11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
4. In the right pane, click Upperfilters, and then press DELETE.
   
   When you are prompted to do so, click Yes to confirm the deletion.
5. In the right pane, click Lowerfilters, and then press DELETE.
   
   When you are prompted to do so, click Yes to confirm the deletion.
6. Restart your computer.
7. If the issue still exists, repeate steps 1 through 6 to delete upper and lower filter entries for the following registry subkeys:
   • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E980-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002
   • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Class\{4D36E980-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002
   Then, open Device Manager. If your floppy disk drives are still listed, remove them, and then restart the computer.

For more information about missing devices, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: