Summary: The "Safely Remove Hardware" icon can occasionally disappear. It turns out there's a simple workaround to safely remove hardware anyway.
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I have several USB devices, and I'm used to using the "safely remove hardware" icon in the taskbar before I unplug any of them. All of a sudden that icon has disappeared, and I see no way to "safely remove hardware". What do I do? Can I just unplug the device I want to remove anyway? Or do I need to reboot every time this happens? |
This happens to me all the time. The remove hardware icon in the taskbar's notification area disappears occasionally for reasons unknown. I've never actually had a problem just unplugging the device anyway, but it still makes me feel uncomfortable to do so.
So, I stumbled onto a fairly reasonable workaround.
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Normally, when you have a removable USB device installed, Windows displays a small icon in the notification area (the right most collection of icons) of your task bar:
If you hover your mouse over it you'll see it's tool-tip: "Safely Remove Hardware".
The purpose of "Safely Remove Hardware" is simple: it's how you tell Windows that you're about to remove a device so that Windows can finish whatever it needs to do with it. In the case of disks, for example, Windows flushes all disk buffers, avoiding things like potential corruption.
And that's the fear - if you remove something like a USB thumb drive without first telling Windows, it's possible to corrupt the contents of the drive. In practice that doesn't happen often, but it's possible.
The problem is that occasionally, for reasons unknown, the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon can disappear. Even though there are devices installed that require it - it's nowhere to be found.
When this happens, what I've found is that you can click on Start, Run..., and type in:
RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll
And press OK.
That will bring up the "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog:
From this dialog you can click on the device you want to remove, and press Stop. Once Windows is done with it, you can then remove the device.
Of course a side effect I noticed when I did this was that the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon reappeared.
If it happens often enough, you can create a desktop shortcut for that geeky looking command.
Right click on your desktop, click on New, and then click on Shortcut. In the resulting dialog box enter that "RunDLL32" command listed above.
That will bring up the "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog:
Click on Next and change the name to "Safely Remove Hardware":
Now, whenever you need to remove hardware, and the icon isn't present on the taskbar notification area, you can simply double click on this new shortcut and get the job done.
Related:
Is there a way to "Safely Remove Hardware" from a batch file? Automating the steps required to "safely remove hardware" isn't at all obvious, but it is possible.
How can I tell if I have USB 2.0? USB (Universal Serial Bus) 2.0 is a significantly faster version of USB 1.1. Determining which you have is not at all obvious. But it is fairly easy.
Why won't my system recognize my USB device? We go over some quick fixes to make sure your system recognizes USB devices.
Article C2783 - September 9, 2006
Your advice on how to get the Safely Remove Hardare does not work on my home edition XP. I first typed it exactly the way you said to type it and then tried every deviation on it I could think. It always said the location could not be found.
Posted by: Sylvia at May 13, 2009 12:26 PMThanks, Leo. I have this problem on a computer at work but the icon only disappears when a member of Advanced Users logs on. Administrators have no problem, never. I´m really worried.
Posted by: Eduardo at May 14, 2009 9:04 AMThanks SO much.
Worked Perfectly!
Posted by: Aaron at May 23, 2009 7:04 PMThanks for the info. I used the command you gave and it brought up the box as you said but it did not have my storage device in the box so I still had a problem. Any ideas?
Posted by: Anne at May 25, 2009 12:38 AMDid as you said, but no device is listed in the "safely remove" box that comes up. What do I do now?
Posted by: Lisa at May 25, 2009 11:23 AMWorked first time on Win XP Home. That will save me so much time faffing with unhappy Windows error messages. Cheers!! I've made a shortcut and it works too. No complaints here :)
Posted by: Sue at June 9, 2009 1:32 AMi tried this to fix my computer worked a treat and put back the icon thank you
Posted by: k.fish at June 16, 2009 1:00 PMBrill, perfect fix!
Posted by: Mike at June 17, 2009 6:18 AMIcon has not reappeared but created shortcut as indicated and this works a treat.
Many Thanx
We use an external enclosure with 5 SATA disks that was first recognized by our Windows 2003 SP2 server as a set of removable devices. Now the icon is gone and the disks are behaving as non-removable ones. Even when I use the solution above the list of removable devices is empty. Any hints would be appreciated.
Posted by: Milton Lopez at June 30, 2009 4:30 PMI have a Nokia N95 8gb. When plugging it in to my xp laptop, PC Suite runs perfectly despite the phone not showing up on My Computer! I assume that because it doesn't show up on My Computer the Safely Remove Hardware button is missing. I have to shut down my laptop before unplugging my phone to avoid damaging it. The Safely Remove Button used to show up and the phone also used to show under My Computer until I was prompted by PC Suite to update the software. All other usb devices which I plug into my laptop show up on My Computer and the Safely Remove Harware button works. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks a lot. PS: I have tried the fix mentioned above but it doesn't work due to the fact that the phone doesn't show up on My Computer.
Posted by: Nicholas at July 2, 2009 11:19 PM