Outlook 2007 stops USB external drives being disconnected

[Steven]

Hi

I have a USB external drive attached to my PC. When using Outlook 2007
though, I find I am unable to disconnect it using the "Safely Remove USB
Hardware" Tool. What's the reason for Outlook 2007 keeping a lock on drives
?


Steven

 

[Roady [MVP]]

What's the exact error that you get when trying?
Did you open an Outlook item from the drive?
Did you save anything directly from Outlook to that drive?

 

[Steven]

No, Outlook 2007 is installed locally and I'm simply launching it though the
standard Start->Programs launcher.
I've not got any dependencies upon the remote drive (indeed, I have a couple
and the same issue arises for them) too. I've simply observed that that
when having Outlook 2007 open I loose the ability to disconnect any USB
drive. What I have to do nowadays, is to simply shutdown Outlook prior to
disconnecting any drive. The question I have is, why ?

Steven.

 

[Steven]

Interestingly recently the problem appears to have gone away all by itself.
If it reappears I'll reopen the thread.

Thanks.

 

[Steven]

Another occurrence.

Exact error message is:

The device 'Generic volume' cannot be stopped because a program is still
accessing it.


This error disappears when closing Outlook. It's really quite odd, since
Outlook has absolutely no connection to the external drive, everything is C:
drive based - furthermore, the SysInternals FileMon tool hasn't yet shown
anything but I'll dig around further and perhaps will uncover the root
cause.



Steven