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USB Removable Disk - Can't get to safely remove

15 years ago

I have HP Pavilion, 64,4G, Vista

I have 4 usb removable disks open that I can't get to close or "safely remove". These are Removable disks F,H,I and J showing on the list below. I'm pretty sure this is what happens when the usb ports are used and not closed out properly by using the 'safely remove feature'. I try to make sure that it's done like that when removing something from the ports but with grand kids i can't always make sure that they are doing it.

I bring them up in the 'computer' window and right click and then click on 'safely remove' but then I get this window...I am not using any of the usb ports when I get this message, so of course I don't have any program to close.

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of them or is it now a permanent thing on my computer.

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Comments (3)

ravencajun Zone 8b TX
15 years ago
sorry I can not read the screen shot here or on the photobucket page.

I assume you have tried rebooting the pc a few times to see if it corrects itself?

Have you tried going to my computer and clicking directly on each of those drive letters and close or shut down etc from there?

Are there any of those external usb devices actually now plugged into the pc?
lotodig
Original Author
15 years ago
RC, I have rebooted my pc many times over several months, the open disks have been there several months but nothing I have been able to do has gotten them to close.

Yes i did go into 'my computer' and click directly on each drive letter and tried to close from there but i get this Yellow Triangle ERROR alert titled PROBLEM EJECTING USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE, In the error box it says "windows cannot stop your MS/MS-Pro USB Device because a program is still using it". But I am not using any of them.
None of the usb ports that I am referring to have anything plugged into them.
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so you did not read the part at the top with the date from 08 where we had been having a discussion about how to remove things using the safely remove icon???? I do recall the discussion we had been having about using the safely remove icon, in that discussion urlee jumped in to make the above comment. So to make things perfectly clear for you the original discussion was concerning the USE of the safely remove icon, not necessarily for use with a memory card, but in general how to use it. This would be why in my response I mentioned the use of both a usb plug in reader and her built in card reader. This whole post was not actually a question on her part but to say had she read her manual she would have seen that she did not need to use the safely remove icon for her memory card using her pc slot. Hence her "LOL"
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Your post reminds me how out of touch I have become with this kind of problem (and I am just posting about a possible win install too). However like you, I remember some things from my past and I suspect that your problem is probably a simple fix. At least for the time being, I think reinstalling windows is extreme and since you have a second working computer you should wait for some of these other clever folks to help. I'll bet there is some utility to help with this but if not, there must be a way to mnually link particular extensions to specific programs, and for the time being you would probably only need to make a couple of links (but don't ask me how).
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Have you looked in the Event Viewer at Error logs ? Might look in Services and if the spooler is Started, Stop it, or temporarly Disable, and maybe also the items that depend on an active spooler, like TCP/ip PrintServer and maybe other services too. Maybe. If you cross your fingers & hold your head just right - after a reboot, hopefull you would be able to uninstall.
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Here's the technical answer: When you *write* a file to a USB drive (or any drive) and Windows/Mac says the copy is finished, it's not finished. To speed things up, part of the file is "cached" in memory -- the copy finishes shortly after. You can disable this, but I wouldn't recommend it. "Safely remove" ensures that the data is completely written to the drive. If you haven't written anything to the drive, or if the file copy finished more than about 10 seconds ago OR the "busy" light stopped flashing (or whatever it does on your device, if such a light exists), then it's perfectly safe to remove the device with a few rare exceptions. If you did write a file and remove the device too early, that file will simply not be written to the disk. This is a slight oversimplification which involves the file system journal and other details which I'll discuss if anyone cares, but I'm just trying to give a rule of thumb here. It's never "wrong" to "Safely remove", but it wastes a little bit of time.
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vala55
15 years ago
I have that problem, thoroughly researched and found lots and lots of people with the same problem. Mine came on after I did an MS Update. This was on this computer and the one I gave away. When I reformatted the one I gave away I did not update it and the problem was gone. When I click on the icon the message is somewhat the same as you received. Then I click on devices and printers, I clicked on something there and sometimes it works.

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