• Search for:

• About

  Welcome to the Phurix research and development labs. Here you'll find our experiments and findings as part of our on going Internet engineering.

• Projects

  • Bitcoin eWallet
  • Domain Name Whois
  • Down Or Me
  • Eggdrop TCL
  • PageRank Viewer
  • TrackJacker
  • URL Shortner
  • Validate an email address
  • What is my IP?

• Recent Comments

  • Donald on Create a unique company name
  • alanc230 on Is Google PageRank dead?
  • RAHUL SHUKLA on Create a unique company name
  • rajendran on Create a unique company name
  • Jon on Rip and decode mp3s via myspace music player

• Subscribe to our newsletter

  Email Address :

← My computer has problems, what can I do? Parts inside your printer are at the end of their service life →

Safely Remove Hardware Icon

Posted on January 25, 2007 by admin

Here’s a quick guide on what to do if your “Safely remove hardware” icon has disappeared from your system tray.

This is a troublesome issue as it means that you cannot stop your USB devices therefore meaning you could cause corruption on your USB device.

How to always bring up the dialog (without the icon)

1. Go to Start -> Run,
2. Enter: %windir%\system32\RUNDLL32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll
3. The “Safely remove hardware” dialog windows should appear.

How to control the “Safley remove hardware” icon behavior

1. Right-Click on the Task Bar
2. Select Properties
3. Under the taskbar tab, click the Customize button
4. Select the program you wish to hide
5. Under the drop down box, select Always Hide, Always Show, or Hide when inactive.
6. Click OK

How to restore the icon to your system tray

1. Open “My Computer”
2. Right click on a drive and click Properties
3. Click on the Hardware tab
4. Select the removable drive from the list
5. Click the “Properties” button
6. Click on the Policies tab
7. Change it from “Optimize for quick removal” to “Optimize for performance”

Note: If you don’t plan on hot-swapping your USB device very often, and you will ALWAYS make sure you use the “Safely remove hardware” dialog to remove your hardware, then use “Optimize for performance”, otherwise in most cases it is best to use “Optimize for quick removal”, this will allow you to unplug your USB device without worrying about corruption.

Further details are mentioned here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828012

Related posts:

1. How to Print to a Text File Device Manager does not have a Save command available for...
2. Icon Software Over the past few weeks I’ve been assisting the creation...
3. How can I recycle my computer hardware? NEVER THROW AWAY YOUR COMPUTER EQUIPMENT There’s many ways to...
4. Samsung ML-4500 XP driver install I decided I was finally fed up with my Epson...
5. How to add/remove words in the firefox custom spell check dictionary I added a word to my Mozilla Firefox spell check...

About admin

The author formerly known as HM2K is now the Phurix Labs administrator.

One Response to Safely Remove Hardware Icon

1. Mike says:

   December 22, 2008 at 7:57 am

   The Dialogue comes up but the icon does not appear in the tray does not work