yes, it shows

Code:
alias block-major-2 off
and yes, I've rebooted. in my bios (ie if I hit F2 when the computer's booting up) it shows both floppy disk A and B as disabled, but that doesn't help any.

Some more information:

When my computer freezes the way I described, if I hit ctrl-alt-F1, I the following on the screen:

Code:
end-request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0
end-request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 1
end-request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 2
end-request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 3
end-request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 4
About two minutes pass between the computer's displaying of each of those lines. The whole time, back in my GUI, everything's frozen. Finally, when it unfreezes, it's in the /mnt directory, and "floppy" appears as one of the FILES, not one of the subdirectories.

Finally, I forgot to mention that when I did "update-modules" like you said, I got the following error:

Code:
depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.22-xfs/kernel/drivers/char/drm/gamma.o
I appreciate all your help. Maybe there's something else I can do?

Thanks again,

V.