Mysterious Disappearing Icon

Have you ever been annoyed by the green "Safely Remove Hardware" icon that often disappears from the system tray when you go to disconnect an external USB device? There is a nice way to avoid that frustration by creating your own permanent shortcut that accomplishes the same purpose.

I found the basic idea for this tip offered by a blogger named Raymond. I have embellished his basic concept and fleshed it out a little bit.

If your green "Safely Remove Hardware" continues to disappear from your system tray even if you have it marked as "Always show" in your customized taskbar properties, then try the following steps:

1. Create a dummy shortcut (for example, copying an existing shortcut to your desktop).
2. Right click on the shortcut and select the "Properties" menu option at the very bottom
3. Select the "General" tab
4. In the field at the top, type in some meaningful title like "Safely Remove Hardware"




5. Next, select the "Shortcut" tab
6. In the shortcut's "Target:" field, type the following *CaSe SeNsItIvE* entry:
   
   rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll



7. In the "Start in:" field, enter "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\" (without the quotations)
8. Optional: In the "Comment:" field, add a descriptive comment something like:
   
   Use when Safely Remove Hardware icon does not appear in system tray




9. Optional: Set the green icon by clicking the "Change Icon..." button and
   into the field at the top, copy and paste the following:
   
   %SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32\hotplug.dll




10. Click the "OK" button at the bottom to save your work.
11. Move or copy the new shortcut to your desktop, start menu, quick launch menu, or any other preferred location

One final tip: when you double-click on the shortcut to open it, be sure to check the "Display device components" box in the lower left corner. That will provide amplifying information to make an informed choice about which device to close. Otherwise, you might be stuck with multiple entries all reading "USB Mass Storage Device", making it impossible to distinguish which entry represents a large external USB hard drive and which entry indicates a small USB thumb drive.

Presto! Simply by activating this shortcut, you can now easily invoke the "Safely Remove Hardware" process even without the icon in your system tray.