[gust0208]

Hello everyone,

I have another one of those windows annoyances, the "Safely remove hardware" icon is not appearing in my taskbar when I have USB devices plugged into my system. It was appearing before and this new behavior has been for about the last 2 weeks or so. I can't think of any major system changes made in that time. Any ideas on how to recover this icon or to somehow access the same program through the command line?

Cheers,
Tom

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Hi gust0208!

Right click in an empty part of your taskbar, select PROPERTIES, then click the CUSTOMIZE button. Scroll down the list until you see the SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE item. Highlight it, and from the drop down list to the right choose Hide When Inactive.

Fenor

[Fenor]

Hi gust0208!

Right click in an empty part of your taskbar, select PROPERTIES, then click the CUSTOMIZE button. Scroll down the list until you see the SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE item. Highlight it, and from the drop down list to the right choose Hide When Inactive.

Fenor

[gust0208]

Thanks for the quick reply,

I tried the suggestion (I had tried changing it to "always show" just before posting) and still, the icon will not appear when a USB device is plugged in (testing with my USB thumb drive). Any other ideas for getting the icon to appear or other ways to access the "safely remove hardware" window?

Cheers,
Tom

Hi gust0208!

Right click in an empty part of your taskbar, select PROPERTIES, then click the CUSTOMIZE button. Scroll down the list until you see the SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE item. Highlight it, and from the drop down list to the right choose Hide When Inactive.

Fenor

[Fenor]

Do the items attached to your USB ports still work even though the safely remove hardware icon doesn't show?

Fenor

[gust0208]

Hello and thanks for the quick reply,

Yes, the USB devices work perfectly. I have tried a number of devices and they all work. The USB flash drive shows up in the My Computer area as a drive per usual and I am able to write files to it. I also have two USB 2.0 external hard drives that working perfectly as well.

Cheers,
Tom

Do the items attached to your USB ports still work even though the safely remove hardware icon doesn't show?

Fenor

[Fenor]

Then I wouldn't really worry about it. Unlike 2000 where you have to stop the usb devices before you remove them, in XP you can just unplug and plug them in at will.

Fenor

[gust0208]

Thanks for the tip! I won't sweat it now and I think I may have found the initial cause. I have been working on some home-brew USB projects and using the open source libusb drivers and found a forum posting discussing a similar phenomenon.

Thanks for all the help.

Cheers,
Tom

p.s. I just noticed the change in the forum look today

Then I wouldn't really worry about it. Unlike 2000 where you have to stop the usb devices before you remove them, in XP you can just unplug and plug them in at will.

Fenor

[steed]

hellow, can you tell me how you solve the problem in the end? A fried of mine has the same problem.
thanks

[steed]

by the way, I am Chinese. Which country is this forum in?