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General discussion

help - can't eject USB devices safely

Oct 20, 2007 4:45AM PDT

Hello,

Am running Vista 32 bit on a brand new Toshiba Satellite P100. I've not been able to safely remove SUB devices -- specifically my titanium sandisk 4 gb cruzer and my western digital 150 gb external hard drive.

If I use the provided "eject" options for both, or right click them and try and remove safely, it gives me the dialog boxes saying it's now safe to move them. They also then don't show up in explorer, as if it should be possible to remove them. However, their lights still shine, demonstrating that I shouldn't yank them. The problem is that although the lights are on I see no other way to try and right click and safely remove them. I end up having to shut down my laptop to remove them.

Ideas? I'm at a loss and this makes using my flash drive or external drive a real hassle. Thanks, Ed

Discussion is locked

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Have You Checked?
Oct 20, 2007 7:08AM PDT

...the manufacturer's site (Toshiba) to see if there are newer motherboard/chipset drivers or BIOS versions available for your particular model? Updating the above items should help the problem.

Hope this helps.

Grif

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usb trouble
Oct 20, 2007 7:20AM PDT

Grif:

Thanks for the note. Yes, I've tried and checked all the updates. Everything is up-to-date according to Toshiba and Microsoft.

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"lights still shine," is no longer a good indicator.
Oct 20, 2007 7:15AM PDT

I've seem this change on my Vista laptops. Sadly I'm going to give the nod that things are no longer the same in the new land of Vista.

So eject and remove them.

Bob

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(NT) Typo. Arg... seen....
Oct 20, 2007 7:24AM PDT
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yank USB when light's still on
Oct 20, 2007 7:24AM PDT

Bob:

Okay, just so I'm clear -- you're saying it's okay to remove if the computer said so, even if the light is still on? I thought that was a bad idea. Have you gotten any improper ejection notices after doing this and then reinserting the USB device later?

Thanks for your time, Ed

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My bet is ...
Oct 20, 2007 7:35AM PDT

Those notes were written before Vista. Your choice here but I did see that some device lights don't go out like before. I can see how this could confuse people.

Here I just do the safely remove and then pull it after a few seconds if Windows doesn't warn me not to.

Bob