Safely Remove Hardware tray icon never appears

[Geoff Briedé]

Hello All,

Has anyone else run into the problem of having the "Safely Remove Hardware"
system tray icon not appear - even when something that needs "stopping" is
inserted into the computer? Like a USB flash drive or a laptop's removable
CD/DVD ROM.....

When I remove the drive anyway Windows warns that it is not safe to do so,
without stopping the device first - but I can't click on an icon that isn't
there.

Does anyone know how to restore that icon?

TIA

- Geoff

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

Some of the things that can trigger this behavior.

You automatically log on to XP.
Fix, set a password for your account.


You have icons in the Notification Area set to autohide.
Deselect this option. Right click the Taskbar and select Properties, remove the check mark from "Hide inactive icons."

If this doesn't help, see the following article:
Microsoft Windows XP - Unplug or eject devices:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...cs/en-us/hardware_display_removable_icon.mspx