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In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
- Bobb - <bobb@noemail.123> wrote:

> I recently bought a few USB devices and they have no power off.on
> switches. SO, in XP I click systray icon and select "Safely remove
> hardware". About 25% of the time it comes back with "device in use".
> Not by me it isn't. I haven't used it at all this session
> I checked and device mgr - policies shows
> 'Optimize for quick removal ' - so caching not enabled.
>
> I did just check my P drive (External USB drive) and it does have "
> Allow Indexing Service ..." checked. Might that be it ? For my
> memory sticks I don't have that turned on and get the message with
> those too. I tried Google and spent a lot of time looking at pages
> that didn't relate to my problem. Anyone else have this intermittent
> " device in use" message. Resolution ? Especially for a device that
> has no problem off switch ?

If it's a storage device, it will probably be reported as 'in use' if you
have Windows Explorer (or a third-party equivalent such as PowerDesk) or 'My
Computer' open. Close all such applications and try again. You may not
actively have *used* it - but its presence will have been logged by Explorer
nevertheless. You don't have to be actually reading from it or writing to it
for it to be reported as in use.
--
Cheers,
Roger
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!

"Roger Mills" <> wrote in message
news:...
> In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
> - Bobb - <bobb@noemail.123> wrote:
>
>> I recently bought a few USB devices and they have no power off.on
>> switches. SO, in XP I click systray icon and select "Safely remove
>> hardware". About 25% of the time it comes back with "device in use".
>> Not by me it isn't. I haven't used it at all this session
>> I checked and device mgr - policies shows
>> 'Optimize for quick removal ' - so caching not enabled.
>>
>> I did just check my P drive (External USB drive) and it does have "
>> Allow Indexing Service ..." checked. Might that be it ? For my
>> memory sticks I don't have that turned on and get the message with
>> those too. I tried Google and spent a lot of time looking at pages
>> that didn't relate to my problem. Anyone else have this intermittent
>> " device in use" message. Resolution ? Especially for a device that
>> has no problem off switch ?
>
> If it's a storage device, it will probably be reported as 'in use' if you
> have Windows Explorer (or a third-party equivalent such as PowerDesk) or
> 'My Computer' open. Close all such applications and try again. You may not
> actively have *used* it - but its presence will have been logged by
> Explorer nevertheless. You don't have to be actually reading from it or
> writing to it for it to be reported as in use.
> --
> Cheers,
> Roger
> ______
> Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
> monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
> PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!
I've got the warning disabled...but don't remeber how I did it. When the
activity light on the device stops flashing it's OK to disconnect it

In news:sOOdnQt24-,
- Bobb - <bobb@noemail.123> typed:
> I have watched for that and although I may have opened My Computer
> once or twice, it might have been 30 minutes earlier. The message
> DOES say wait and try again - never works. Once I get that message -
> I can never 'safely remove' it. I always log off and on. Not a big
> deal to do so - just irritating - and wanted to make sure it wasn't
> 'just me'. Thanks

I have seen some hard drive utilities cause this. Also MS Word and I bet
other applications does this too. That is if you opened a file off of the
drive, but later closed the file, the OS still thinks that the application
is still using that drive. Closing the application in question will release
it.

I too used to just pull the plug on a drive once the light stopped flashing.
It worked well until one time and Windows popped up a message that you
couldn't perform a write to the drive and the information was lost. The
drive turned out to be okay and there was some corrupted file that appeared
and some sort of temporary file that I didn't need anyway. But it scared me
enough that I stopped just pulling the plug out nowadays.

Next time it happens, just close applications one at a time. If that doesn't
work, try closing things in the system tray (never terminate things in this
case, as the drive will never be released until you logoff). I think you
will find the one causing most if not all of the problems. And good luck!

--
Bill
Gateway Celeron M 370 (1.5GHZ)
MX6124 (laptop) w/2GB
Windows XP Home SP2 (120GB HD)
Intel(r) 910GML (64MB shared)

On 8 Aug, 23:24, "- Bobb -" <b...@noemail.123> wrote:
> "Roger Mills" <watt.ty...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:...
>
>
>
> > In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
> > - Bobb - <b...@noemail.123> *wrote:
>
> >> I recently bought a few USB devices and they have no power off.on
> >> switches. SO, in XP I click systray icon and select "Safely remove
> >> hardware". About 25% of the time it comes back with "device in use".
> >> Not by me it isn't. *I haven't used it at all this session
> >> I checked and device mgr - policies shows
> >> 'Optimize for quick removal ' - so caching not enabled.
>
> >> I did just check my P drive (External USB drive) and it does have "
> >> Allow Indexing Service *..." checked. Might that be it ? For my
> >> memory sticks I don't have that turned on and get the message with
> >> those too. *I tried Google and spent a lot of time looking at pages
> >> that didn't relate to my problem. Anyone else have this intermittent
> >> " device in use" message. Resolution ? Especially for a device that
> >> has no problem off switch ?
>
> > If it's a storage device, it will probably be reported as 'in use' if
> > you have Windows Explorer (or a third-party equivalent such as
> > PowerDesk) or 'My Computer' open. Close all such applications and try
> > again. You may not actively have *used* it - but its presence will have
> > been logged by Explorer nevertheless. You don't have to be actually
> > reading from it or writing to it for it to be reported as in use.
> > --
> > Cheers,
> > Roger
>
> I have watched for that and although I may have opened My Computer once or
> twice, it might have been 30 minutes earlier. The message DOES say wait
> and try again - never works. Once I get that message - I can never 'safely
> remove' it. I always log off and on. *Not a big deal to do so - just
> irritating - and wanted to make sure it wasn't 'just me'.
> Thanks

It doesn't matter how long ago; it's sufficient for an application to
still have a folder on the removable drive open. You need to exit
everything you used to access the drive, or at least point them
elsewhere, e.g. move Windows Explorer to a folder another drive, cd
likewise at an MSDOS prompt, close the file(s) on multi-file
applications like Word and Excel, or open a file elsewhere if it's
another application like IrfanView (which is the usual culprit in my
case viewing camera cards).

Chris