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113453

April 26th, 2012 13:00

Safely Remove Hardware icon never goes away

Hello....I have an Dell latitude d630 laptop and the icon to Safely Remove Hardware in the task bar by the clock that says select devise to unplug or eject hardware devises TSST corp DVD+RW TS-L632H is always there.I tried removing the cd/dvd drive and putting it back in but the icon shows back up, I also tried the hiding inactive icons but I unchecked it as part of optimizing tweaks to free up cpu to run my realtime audio programs.I also uninstalled the driver but when I restart the laptop the driver is there again along with Safely Remove Hardware icon.

How would I get rid of the icon ?

Any help would be appreciated
Thanks

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13 Posts

April 26th, 2012 17:00

Found this on google http://fightingforalostcause.net/blog/?p=1044

would this way of removing the Safely Remove Hardware icon work ?

here what it says

My new laptop has a removable DVD drive, which is nice, but I'll rarely--if ever--remove it and because it's removable Windows puts the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray, which is annoying to someone who is as nuerotic and anal-retentive as I am. If you search for a way to remove it most webpages will only give you bad workarounds (like hiding the icon itself instead of changing the device to be considered non-removable) or tell you it's impossible to fix. But, I found a real solution in a usenet post and thought it'd be helpful to write out some clear instructions.

The driver for the device has a flag telling Windows that it is a 'removable' device, which gets loaded into the registry whenever the device is loaded. So, you basically just need to setup a way to automatically overwrite the registry value when the system boots.

First you'll need to get the ID of the device you want to remove.

  • Open Device Manager (Start > Run > devmgmt.msc)
  • Right-click on the device and go to Properties, then open the Details tab
  • The 'Device Instance Id' item will be selected by default in the drop-down list
  • It will look something like 'IDE\CDROMPBDS_DVD+RW_DS8W1P\[...]\DB1B\[...]\5&C10F4F&0&0.0.0
  • Keep that window open, or write down the ID because you'll need it in the next step

The next step is to modify the removable value in the registry.

  • Open the registry editor (Start > Run > regedit)
  • Drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum
  • Then use the sections of the ID to locate the device (e.g., IDE, then CDROMPBDS_DVD+RW_DS8W1P\[...]\DB1B\[...] then 5&C10F4F&0&0.0.0
  • By default you probably won't have permssion to modify the value, so right click on the key (folder) and go to Permissions and give your account 'Full Control'
  • Inside that key will be a value named 'Capabilities', which will have a value of 4 or 6 or some higher number
  • Right click on the value and select 'Modify,' then subtract 4 from the value (e.g., change 6 to 2, 4 to 0, etc) and click 'Ok'

At this point the device isn't recognized as removable. It might take windows a moment to update the Safely Remove Hardware app, or you might have to open it up to refresh it, but the device is updated. The icon may stick around, but after the next step that will be taken care of.

The last step is to make sure that the value is automatically updated every time Windows boots (because the value is loaded from the device driver every time, so we have to overwrite it every time).

  • Go to File > Export and save the key to somewhere on your computer
  • Open it with a text editor and get rid of all the extra subkeys and values that we don't want to change. In the end it should look something like this:

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\IDE\CdRomPBDS_DVD+-RW_DS-8W1P____________________BD1B____\5&c10f4f&0&0.0.0]
    "Capabilities"=dword:00000002

  • Back in the registry editor, browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
  • Right click > New > String value
  • Give it a name then Right click and Modify
  • Enter regedit /s "C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\DVD Not Removable.reg" (Update the path for where you saved the file and what you named it)

Now that .reg file containing the updated value will be loaded every time you log on to your account and (assuming it was the only removable device) the Safely Remove Hardware icon won't show up anymore.

6.4K Posts

April 26th, 2012 14:00

The Safely Remove icon is popping up because it is detecting a removable storage device.  For some reason your operating system is seeing your optical drive as a removable hard drive, and I don't know of any method of disabling the Safely Remove icon for your optical drive without permanently removing it for everything else as well.

4 Operator

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34.2K Posts

April 26th, 2012 16:00

Hi Water Gun,

I had a Latitude D620 for several years. This is normal behavior, since the media bay device is recognized as a removable drive. There is no way to remove the icon that I know of.

6.4K Posts

April 26th, 2012 20:00

Looks like a very slick trick, and I hope it works for you.  Personally, however, I think I would just ignore the presence of the icon.  Because the device ID gets assigned in the OS, there are likely some things that can happen to alter the device ID, in which case the icon may show up again.  It will almost certainly show up again if you ever need to re-install the OS or if you have to replace the drive.  This is in addition to the risk you take when directly editing the registry; things might get interesting if an error is made.

Best of luck to you!

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34.2K Posts

April 27th, 2012 13:00

I agree with JackShack, but on the other hand there is no danger "ejecting" a DVD drive.

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13 Posts

April 27th, 2012 14:00

I gave the tweak A shot and got to the last step - Enter regedit /s "C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\DVD Not Removable.reg" (Update the path for where you saved the file and what you named it), I couldn't find where to enter the path....so yeah :emotion-22:

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March 6th, 2025 14:09

@water gun​ Hi,

I am have the same issue of my internal SSDs showing up as removable media in windows 11. I tried your resolution and it mostly worked upto the point where I restart my Dell Alienware M16 R1 Laptop. The SSDs pop up again as removable media. When I checked the Registry editor the capabilities value of my SSD returned to its original value, i.e., the value without the deduction of 4 from it. Adding the string value that points to the reg file containing the edited value (that you asked to save on the computer) does not stop the registry to revert back to its original value. This is windows 11 so I think there might be some more tweaking that needs to be done. I will be grateful if you can reply to this post and provide a solution that works for this issue in windows 11. One last thing. I have 4 internal SSDs that need to be stopped from being available as removable media. If you can provide a solution for the entire problem I'd be very thankful.

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