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.

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.
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.

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.
This article was posted by VG in following section: Troubleshooting, Windows Vista.
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Pet
You can always go into the various USB device properties and set to performance instead of quick removal.. Makes transfers alot faster.. I'm pretty sure this removes the quick removal icon..
David
Wow. Even XP have this function. ;)
David
* has this function.
TheAslan
Hiya!!
you have any idea how to get safely remove hardware back to Windows 7 systray, today when i opened my computer it was disappered, and my Maxtor One Touch 4 was not in my computer harddrive lists, what causes this problem and how to get that icon back to my systray.
Windows 7 Nvidia Edition x64 2010
Thanx mate!!
VG
^^ Try to access it using following command:
rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll