Safely Remove Hardware Icon

Lost my "safely remove hardware" icon.

How do you get it back in the tray?

Already tried "properties", "customize", "always show".

Didn't bring it back.

 

Try this:


1.Click Start > Run > and type in without the quotes: “RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll” ; Then click on OK.
2.Now you should see the “Safely Remove Hardware” window pop up.
3.Now you can choose the USB device from the list and safely remove it by selecting it and pressing stop. When Windows pops up a balloon saying “Safe To Remove Hardware” then you can remove the device. You will also notice that the “safely remove hardware icon” is now restored back in your taskbar.

 

AAPL---

Did this. The dialog box appears but nothing populates the window for selection of the hardware device.

 

Maybe we should back up a bit.

What exactly are you trying to remove?

 

What version of Windows are you running? Did you have any removing device plugged in to the USB? (What kind of device?)

 

Want to be able to remove any USB device; flash, mouse, keyboard, printer, etc. Also, doesn't this apply for removing an SD Card?

 

XP

Mouse, keyboard, printer.

 

Those items should be expected peripherals in XP. When I bring up my "Safely Remove Hardware" dialogue box, it is empty as well. The hardware utility you mention is mostly used for plug and play, like flash drives and such.

Printers, mice, and keyboards should be removed from the Device Manager dialogue box.

 

I don't believe you need do a "remove device" on all non storage related peripherals. e.g. keyboard, mouse, printer. They don't have any storage capacity for any data. You just unplug your USB keyboard, mouse, printer. It's not gonna hurt your keyboard/mouse/printer a bit.

It's the data storage peripherals that you need to be concerned with. Flash, USB harddisk, etc.. Because there might be currently opened files on those external devices. Unplugging such devices may cause files to be not closed properly.

If you do a "safely remove hardware", I believe Windows will detect if there is currently any opened files on them and "won't let you remove it" if there is. If you proceed to unplug such a device by force, you may or may not have any corrupt files. It depends.

On SD cards: (basically flash memory) you should do a "remove hardware" on it. But if you don't have any program that writes files to it, probably it's not a big deal even if you eject without that step.

 

yup, there's no need to remove them by using safely remove hardware, just unplug all these