floppy drive dying?

I think my a: drive might need replacing cause it's causing my computer to lock up.
This is what happened; I boot the PC, WindowsXP loads fine, all the little background programs run at the start, everything is fine. Then the FDD light flicks on for half a sec, followed by the HDD light which stays on while it looks for god knows what, and after about 5 seconds everything just locks up dead with the light still on. Only option is to shutdown and disconnect the floppy. Then it boots fine.
I have run a full Virus scan.
I've uninstalled the drive and its drivers from windows and rebooted so they install again fresh which worked for one day.
While I was trying to fix it, 2 other Windows issues decided to join in (Corrupt Profile and then "unmountable_boot_volume") so I cracked the shits and did a format/re-install XP.
The original problem is STILL there so I guess it's a hardware issue and I don't have a spare floppy drive to test it.
Anyone else had this problem?

i've got a spare floppy here phil, pretty sure it works but aint tested. $5 and u can have it - panasonic branded...

in the meantime disconnect the floppy and disable floppy in the bios to make sure its the floppy causing probs

$5 is comming your way snr. the old floppy is not even in the case anymore and haven't had a problem since.
Should I drop by your place to get it? what's a good time?

yeah any time after 4pm today should be fine, presuming you still remember where I reside.

mine is dying now as well :S
stupid thing. looks like ill get a USB drive instead.

bah floppy drive dont talk to me about that! i spent a whole weekend on a serve4r at work just to get a damn floppy working! - phil i'd b a little concerned if u got unmountable boot volume error, the only thing to blame there was hdd, but if its fine then u mighta just had a corrupt install coz of the locking up :?

how long u had the hdd for phil? could be dying on ya if its a volume error?

"i'd b a little concerned if u got unmountable boot volume error, the only thing to blame there was hdd"

umm... remember my pc at nuke's? it aint just hdd that causes those errors, that's just pure XP some of the time.

yer well after all my fun with the FDD at work i hate floppy's with a passion and will blame them for all things bad now!

Yeah, the boot error was an XP thing but the reinstall fixed that. Got the floppy off Silencer (yes I will get that $5 to you soon) and no lock ups since. The hard drive is almost new, from the week before the last LOTD LAN.

new hdd then yeah as u said it was just xp.