Safely Remove Hardware problem

[Guest]

The little icon that appears in the taskbar that is
for "Safely Remove Hardware" only loads half the time.
I've given my computer plenty of type at startup to load
everything, but the icon only appears in the taskbar
arbitrarily.

I continuously have hardware connected that makes it load
the icon; my printer is a multi-device. I also
occasionally connect an external hard drive. The only
way to make the icon appear after startup is to
disconnect everything and put it all back in.

Does anyone have any ideas to make it appear 100% of the
time?

 

[Guest]

I forgot to add that I have "Hide Inactive Icons"
disabled, so there is no chevron or arrow that hides some
of the icons. I cannot click "Customize..." and
pick "Always Show" since it is disabled.

 

[George Bashore]

unknown dude4,
I think the icon only shows up when a mass storage device like a camera or
hard drive is connected.
George

 

[Guest]

The external hard drive is named "Mass Storage Device" on
the computer and does come up as a thing to safely
remove. If I go into the System Properties and Device
Manager, I can find the device, listed under "Disk
Drives", and double-click it. On the "Policies" tab, it
has a link to the Safely Remove Hardware application, and
I can get to it there, which has the device listed, but
the icon in the taskbar does not appear.