Floppy drive not recognized in OS...

Running XP Pro on a MSI 945 Ultra MB that is about six years old, give or take, and this problem arose sometime within the last several months...I think. It is a bit hard to guess exactly when it occurred as I simply don't use the "A" drive very often...it may have been longer that that....anyway...
Floppy drive "A" is not shown in "My Computer" and shows an exclamation point in Device Manager.
Device status window reads: "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39) "
Uninstall and reinstall several times...same problem. When I reinstall, it says "no better driver found than the one already in use" or words to that effect.
Tried "known good" drive...tried "known good" cable...same.
During bootup, the floppy is sampled as normal...light flashes on the drive, and in fact, I can load from the floopy during the boot sequence...but once the OS loads, it goes away...back to never, never land or whatever.
Yes, the drive is set in the BIOS as "Floppy A ".
I have also checked the MSI site for updates...no help there.
Thinking about reloading the OS to see if that gives me back a missing driver or ?
...Any ideas are greatly appreciated...

-Vic
ETA: A big thank you to hawk22 for the help!

 

Yes not unusual I had to do it before. Most likely clogged up Filter.
It is a little job editing the Registry. Detailed description on MS Webside
Article ID: 812489
If you can't find it, come back and I can do a copy and paste of the MS Instructions.
hawk22

 

...hawk22...you da man!

Problem solved...thanks a bunch.

While I'm here, I wonder if you or anyone else has expierenced difficulty with the inability to boot into "safe mode ". I was trying to do this when I was messing around with my floppy drive problem and all I could get was a string of what appears to be drivers loading when I hit the "enter" key to go into safe mode.....it just runs the string and never goes into safe.
Thanks again,

-Vic

 

Your welcome VEL and yes the white lines on the black screen is normal just let them finish might take a while but it will finish and get you to the Safe Mode Screen.
hawk22