Comment 43 for bug 1054414

The following code fro within the Ubuntu 12.10 VM (or Linux Mint 14 for that matter) is:

echo "blacklist floppy" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-floppy.conf
sudo rmmod floppy
sudo update-initramfs -u

This immediately (don't need a reboot)removes the bogus floppy icon from the launcher and also /dev/fd0. You may also sudo rm -fr /media/floppy* if you wish.

See discussion

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/426323?tstart=0