Safely Remove Hardware: where did the icon go? How do I safely remove hardware without it?

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Re: Safely Remove Hardware: where did the icon go?

Great solution, works for me, I've been stressing about that problem for weeks.

Is there a way to do that for the battery icon which gets us both the adjust power, and power meter panels?

At one point I was loosing the Dell Quick Set icon too but, some how I was able to add it to the quick launch panel but, I can't remember how I did it.

I have Windows XP Media Center Edition and my Safely Remove Hardware tray icon likes to magically reappear after I click Log Off at the Start button and then click my User icon to get back into Windows right away. Since the light on the card reader stays on during the Log Off/On cycle, once Windows is finished reloading, I can use the icon. What I don't like is that it the entire Media Center (where all those little card slots are in front) is then useless until a full Restart. Annoying, but a small price to pay to keep from possibly corrupting those expensive little cards!

To Harold who posted ... "I have the opposite problem ... safely remove pops up and makes the sound randomly".

Harold you must have some sort of usb device either plugged in externally or internally on your pc .... anything externally check that it is firmly connected to the usb port.
Check your device manager before and after you hear the sound ... do you have a device showing that wasn't there earlier?

Some newer pc's use usb connection internally for built in card readers ... the connection may not be too good ??
Check in "my computer" or in vista known as "computer" if the card readers sometimes are not present.

For a finishing touch you can change the icon for your new shortcut to a larger version of the one missing from the toolbar.

Right click on the Icon, select properties and then select change Icom. From there you need to browse to the directory where 'hotplug.dll' lives usually in your windows/system32 folder. Then select 'hotplug.dll' and you should get a choice of 3 icons - one of these is the one used in the toolbar. Select this and close the dialog boxes and your shortcut should have the correct Icon.

I put mine on the bottom right of the desktop next to the toolbar.

Hi Leo I was given the following to hide the icon while keeping the hot-plug filter enabled. I'm assuming it is working as the icon is no longer there, but how can I find out if the hot-plug filter is truly still enabled? I'd just as soon not see the icon.

To Enable hot-plug filter but hide safe-remove icon ( i386 platform ):

Add and set registry: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\xfilt\Parameter0”

To DWORD value “0x80000000”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To enable hot-plug filter and also shows safe-remove icon ( i386 platform ):

Add and set registry “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\xfilt\Parameter0”

To DWORD value “0x80000001”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Enable hot-plug filter but hide safe-remove icon ( x64 platform ):

Add and set registry: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\xfiltx64\Parameter0”

To DWORD value “0x80000000”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To enable hot-plug filter and also shows safe-remove icon ( x64 platform ):

Add and set registry “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\xfiltx64\Parameter0”

To DWORD value “0x80000001”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To disable hot-plug filter, set “Parameter0” to zero value.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since my 'safely remove hardware' icon disappeared in Windows XP I have discovered that if I log off and on again - takes about 20 seconds in total - the icon reappears.

I used your advice re creating a shortcut to safely remove hardware for a slightly differenct problem which had started to occur all of a sudden. After using the icon on the task bar successfully since the purchase of my computer 9 months ago I suddenly experienced a problem. Every time I clicked on the icon, before the message re selecting the hardware appeared, my broadband connection was briefly disconnected and I had a message on the screen that it was dialling up again. The message that it had reconnected obscured the message re selecting the hardware. This was extremely annoying as I had to wait until the broadband message disappeared before I could select the item I wished to remove. By using your method I now have access to the safely remove hardware dialogue box - keeping well away from the icon on the task bar. I cannot understand how on earth it had decided to disconnect my broadband as I was nowhere near the icon re my broadband when it happened. Anyway your solution to the disappearing icon worked for my "faulty" icon.

Many thanks

Maureen

Thanks a lot Leo. Its hard to find Help here in Japan because its all in their Complex Writing system, I wonder how their programs run in Kanji and Hiragana and Katakana. But they do. hehehe. Good Hacking of Microsoft XP program. Maybe this Fault in XP was not fixed by Microsoft as it seems a small thing. Thanks again

Hi - thank you for the information found in your website - it is very informative. I did click on START, RUN and then typed in the RunnDll.32.exe stuff and after finishing typing in all of that I clicked OK. Windows came back at me with a red X and said Error in Shell32.dll Missing entry: control_runDLL. I recently had all of my MS OS reloaded because I had a OS .net SP2 problem. Everything works OK now, but now this pops up. How can I get the "safely remove hardware dialog" box to come up without messing up my nice new OS reload? Thank you.

Hi Leo,

Thanks for thhis tip. I agree that most files don't corrupt when you just pull them out. The one big exception seems to be camera memory cards. I've yanked those out in the past and thereafter, they very often have a tendency to corrupt pictures. Lost 15 pictures of sharks that way on a recent diving trip in Mexico. They were once in a lifetime shots. I absolutely needed the information on this page to make sure that never happened again!

J

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