Summary: The "Safely Remove Hardware" icon can occasionally disappear. It turns out there's a simple workaround to safely remove hardware anyway.
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?
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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:
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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
thanx dude... i welcome ur great broadness of mind which shows helping mentality
Posted by: jiju at December 24, 2009 3:38 AMI did as you told, Leo, and I successed in calling up the Safely remove hardware dialogue box. But ghost! I can not see the USB icon in the Safely remove hardware dialogue box. Although the computer recognized the USB and I can work well with the storage device, and when I plug it out I still hear the sound.
Posted by: Hue NguyenHuy at December 31, 2009 5:04 AMI don't know why ? can you help me more ?
it shows but no storage devices just USB Port Like Adsl wan and Printer,can you help me please,
thanks,
love-maker94@hotmail.com
Posted by: LoveMaker94 at January 6, 2010 10:25 AMNote, I've seen where the
Windows Explorer > right click on the device > Safely Remove
doesn't always appear. The other option is Eject which does pretty much the same thing.
Posted by: Mike at January 21, 2010 6:19 AMThe eject is not always available ex: my external hardrive 250g. I have corrupted it twice in the past but not with taking precautions. I close my computer down if I do not see the icon (there is no eject) I'd rather have an extra shortcut on my desktop.
Posted by: robD at January 21, 2010 7:23 AM