Shutting down my flash drive...?

Question

I left-click on the little icon by the clock, verify that I want to "safely remove" my flash drive. Then I get a window that says, "The device 'Generic volume' cannot be stoped right now. Try stopping the device again later."... with a "OK" button.


So... I right-click the little icon by the clock and I verify that I want to "safely remove hardware" and I get a dialog box- "Safely Remove Hardware"... it says, "Select the device you want to unplug or eject, and then click Stop. When Windows notifies you that it is safe to do so unplug the device from your computer." Only one item available for selection, USB Mass Storage Device, so I just click Stop.

Then another dialog box-- "Confirm devices to be stoped, choose OK to continue. Windows will attempt to stop the following devices. Afther the devices are stopped they may be removed safely." I get 3 options- USB Mass Storage Device, Generic Volume, and the brand name of my flash drive. No matter which one I pick...

Answer 1

first of all... your using microsoft... so expect random events that dont make any sense... but if you arnt using any files on the flash drive or arnt copying/reading from it... you can just unplug it... you can also tell xp to alow the drive to be unpluged at any time... so you dont have to stop it..



hit "start" and right click on "my computer" and hit "properties" then hit the "hardware" tab and hit the "device manager" button... in there you will find your drive at the top under the "disk drives" list... (it has to be plugged in your comp)... double click on the one you want and hit the "policies" tab and select "optimize for quick removal" and then hit "ok"



warning: only do this for usb flash drives that you only use for transferring data... if you do this for a different drive... it will make it slower

Answer 2

The reason why you get this message is because there is a Windows application that is accessing the flash drive. Since the volume (flash drive) is busy, hence Windows cannot close it and hence the message is flashed



Shutdown any applications that could possibly accessing the flash drive. These include Explorer showing the contents of the flash drive or a doc that was opened recently. In such a case, close the Word application



Frankly, there is some issue with this feature that MS Windows offers. I have encountered these several times and haven't been able to find any applcation accessing the flash drive. In this worst case scenario, just unplug the flash drive unsafely :-)

Answer 3

I'm not positive on this, but I don't think it should be showing up as three different devices. That may be part of the problem. It looks like the only option would be to shut down, remove the drive, and then reboot.



Try reconnecting the flash drive and see if it comes up as three devices again.



When I connect my flash drive, I get the bubbles that pop up saying Found New Hardware, USB Mass Storage Device; Found New Hardware, Generic Volume; Found New Hardware, Kingston Digital 2GB Flash Drive... But when I click the safely remove hardware icon on the task bar to disconnect it, it only shows up there as USB mass storage.

Answer 4

If you aren't in the middle of writing to the drive then you can pull it out without the safely remove hardware. I used it once and noticed there was no point as long as no data is being written to it then just power is being run to the device.

Answer 5

Sometimes Windows just gets confused and thinks it is still reading or writing to the flash drive.



Turn off your PC and remove the USB drive.



The next time you use it, things should work fine.

Answer 6

Do you basically pull the flash force out or do you do the risk-free eliminating? regrettably some computers will try this to people for no obvious reason. (asks me to shop unsaved records) this in many cases comes up whilst the computing device hasn't quite finished what it became into doing and have been given interrupted.

Answer 7

Make sure there's no file from ur flash drive that being used when u try to safely remove ur f/drive.

Answer 8

Have you scanned your flash drive for viruses, trojans or spyware lately ? Give that a try first.

Answer 9

I think you have rontokbro virus in your flash drive, scan it using latest antivirus update. (i recommend norton)