Safely Remove Hardware Icon Missing and Can't Eject Through Right Click in My Computer

Hi bighaus90,

The "Safely Remove Hardware" icon can sometimes disappear from the notification area. Even though there are devices installed that require it - it's nowhere to be found.

When this happens, you may perform the following steps:

1. Open the Run command by pressing the Windows logo key +R.
2. Enter the following command and hit Enter:

RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

This will bring up the "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog box:

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From this dialog box you can click on the device you want to remove, and press Stop. Once Windows is done with it, you can then remove the device.

If it happens often enough, you can create a desktop shortcut for the “safely remove hardware” command.

·          Right click on your desktop, click New, and then click Shortcut.

·          In the resulting dialog box enter the following command:

   RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

·          Click Next and change the shortcut name to Safely Remove Hardware.

·          Click Finish.

Create or delete a shortcut

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Create-or-delete-a-shortcut

Now, whenever you need to remove hardware, and the icon isn't present on the taskbar notification area, you can simply double click on this new shortcut and get the job done.

Hope this information helps.

Gokul - Microsoft Support

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