How to Remove Annoying “Safe To Remove Hardware” Message Box in Windows Vista?

In Windows Vista, whenever you click on the “Safe to Remove Hardware” icon in System Tray to eject your removable drive, it shows a dialog box showing that the device can be safely removed.

Safe_to_Remove_Hardware_Dialog_Box.png

Its quite annoying as you have to click on OK button to close the message box otherwise it’ll remain opened. On the other hand, previous Windows versions like Windows XP show balloon tip instead of the dialog box which doesn’t need to respond.

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Microsoft has changed this functionality in Windows 7. Windows 7 no longer shows dialog box, it shows the good old balloon tip similar to Windows XP.

Safe_to_Remove_Hardware_Balloon_Tip.png

Wouldn’t it be great to have the same functionality in Windows Vista? Don’t worry! Its possible. Actually its a bug in Windows Vista and we’ll talk about it in details in following paragraph:

When you click on system tray icon to eject the USB device, Windows Vista shows the annoying dialog box but if you open Windows Explorer and right-click on the USB drive icon and select “Safely Remove” option from context menu, Windows Vista will not show the dialog box. It’ll show a balloon tip in system tray just like Windows XP and Windows 7.

So the bottom line is that Windows Vista shows 2 different things for a single functionality. We are just using 2 different ways to access a single feature and Windows Vista is responding in 2 different ways to both of them.

So always eject the device using right-click menu in Windows Explorer instead of system tray icon and you’ll always get balloon tip instead of annoying dialog box.

BONUS TIP:

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Did you know you can create a direct shortcut to “Safely remove hardware” window by using following command?

rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

Just create a new shortcut for above mentioned command and then you can put it on Desktop or pin it to Taskbar, Start Menu or Start Screen for quick and easy access.

Published in: Troubleshooting Guides, Windows Vista

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

NOTE: Older comments have been removed to reduce database overhead.

  1. somewhere on your website there is shortcut in My Computer for ‘Safe to Remove Hardware’. can’t find it…

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