How To: Create A Desktop Shortcut To Safely Remove Hardware In Windows Vista
You are probably familiar with having to click that annoying little icon to bring up the Safely Remove Hardware dialog box when you need to disconnect a USB device in Windows Vista, but it’s possible to make the disconnect process a little easier.
The purpose of “Safely Remove Hardware” in Windows is that you tell Windows operating system that you’re about to remove a USB flash device so that Windows can finish whatever it needs to do with it. In the case of USB flash memory drives, for example, Windows flushes all disk buffers, avoiding things like potential corruption.And that’s the fear – if you remove something like a USB flash drive without first telling Windows, it’s possible to corrupt the contents of the drive.Although that doesn’t happen often, but it’s possible.Creating a shortcut in Windows Vista desktop to the safely remove hardware will be handy in certain situations were that icon disappears also we have quick access to it .
- Right-click on the Windows Vista desktop, select ‘New’ and then ‘Shortcut’. For the item location, copy and paste the following:
RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL HotPlug.dll
- Then click ‘Next’. Call the shortcut ‘Safely Remove Hardware‘, and you should be done.
- If you want to make the icon look better, right-click on the created desktop shortcut icon, choose ‘Properties’ and then the ‘Shortcut’ tab, click on ‘Change Icon’ and in the ‘Look for icons’ box type:
%windir%\system32\HotPlug.dll
- The first icon in this file matches the ‘Safely Remove Hardware‘ icon so you’ll be able to recognize it more easily.You can place the shortcut anywhere including the quick-launch bar.
- In order to create a hotkey set for the shortcut, right click on its icon and go to properties. Choose the “Shortcut” tab.
- Add in a hotkey set for the shortcut and it’s done. Every time you press key combination, it’ll open the safely remove hardware dialog box.
Now, if the normal notification icon for ‘Safely Remove Hardware‘ doesn’t appear after plug in a USB flash drive, all you need do is double-click your new Windows Vista desktop icon to safely remove any disks before unplugging them.
Tip:
Optimize your USB flash drive for quick removal in Windows Vista:
- Right click on the USB drive icon in Computer.
- Click the Hardware tab.
- Select the desired USB drive and open its Properties.
- Now click on Policies tab.
- Check the radio button that says: “Optimize for quick removal“.
This setting will disable the write caching on the disk that allows you to disconnect the drive without using the “Safely Remove Hardware” option.
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Written by Tony on February 15th, 2009 with
1 comment.
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#1. November 15th, 2009, at 11:45 PM.
Both radio buttons on the Policies tab are disabled, including the one you suggest “Optimize for quick removal“. Now what?