"Safely remove hardware & eject media" takes forever

[Paul Unger]

When I click the USB plug with the green circle/check mark in the task bar to safely eject my USB devices, it takes forever to even see the devices to be able to select the one I want to eject--like, 10-15 seconds! However, if I right-click my USB device in Windows Explorer and click Eject, it is done immediately. Anyone else experienced this / know what's going? Oh, I should add that this in on my x201 (if that makes any difference).

[chinoco02]

Hey there,

I suffer from this exact problem with my T400 Win 7 64 bit. At first I thought it was a printer that I no longer used (shaded/offline). Removed it and still suffered the same problem. The I looked it up on MS knowledge base. There is a hotfix for this and it worked once and now I still have this problem. I have also read another solution where one has to delete all USB root hub in the device manager. Restart and then reinstall all USB devices.

Does anybody else have any other solutions/experiences?

[Paul Unger]

Good to hear I'm not alone, chinoco02. I mean 'good' in the worst possible way--these kinds of problems are no fun...

You said you found a hotfix. Could you pass along the URL? I've searched and couldn't find anything! But my search skills aren't what they probably should be. Thanks for the help!

[ParatoOptimal]

Are you ejecting a USB thumb drive?
Does the LED turn OFF before you disconntect it?
I have threee ThinkPads ... one with Linux and two with W7.
The Linux machine turns the LED off when it's OK to eject the thumbdrive.
The two W7 machines tell me it's safe to eject my drive but the LED is still ON.

[Paul Unger]

Are you ejecting a USB thumb drive?

Yes.

Does the LED turn OFF before you disconntect it?
I have threee ThinkPads ... one with Linux and two with W7.
The Linux machine turns the LED off when it's OK to eject the thumbdrive.
The two W7 machines tell me it's safe to eject my drive but the LED is still ON.

Yes, I'm quite familiar with that aggravating quirk of W7... One of many on the USB side of things. But that's not what I'm talking about. My issue is that, from the time I click on the 'safely remove hardware icon', it takes a long time for the list of ejectable devices to appear. If you have any hints on fixing that quirk, I'm all ears!

[w0qj]

1. I also had this very annoying "Safely remove hardware & eject media" takes forever issue upon purchase of my T410 under Win7-Pro 32-bit.

I phoned Thinkpad support, but they could not solve this issue.

For the record, they said you can try this, which did *NOT* work for me:

[PCI Express] >> [Link State Power] and set this to "maximum" power usage (no power savings).

2. One workaround is, goto Windows Explorer (Win+E), right-click the drive you wish to [Eject] which is sometimes faster.

[Paul Unger]

One workaround is, goto Windows Explorer (Win+E), right-click the drive you wish to [Eject] which is sometimes faster.

Roger. See original post. Still looking for a solution.

[GomJabbar]

I did a little searching on this issue (don't have it myself). It seems that the Safely Remove Hardware icon repopulates the attached devices fresh when you click on the icon. If you have a device such as an unconnected or non-existing network printer, Windows will take some time searching for it.

There are two workarounds I found, but no real solutions.
* Create a desktop shortcut and launch Safely Remove Hardware from there: http://www.articlesbase.com/operating-s ... 88536.html
* Open Devices and Printers, then minimize it. When you need to eject something, open Devices and Printers from the taskbar, then right-click on the device and choose Eject.

[sir_synthsalot]

On my Windows 7 desktop this doesn't happen, only on my Thinkpad preloaded with 7. Also on my desktop when I open Device and Printers it doesn't do the lengthy scan for new hardware that my Thinkpad does. When I did a clean install of 7 on a x60s it didn't have this problem as well. So I suspect it has something to do with the way Lenovo set up Windows.

[chinoco02]

Good to hear I'm not alone, chinoco02. I mean 'good' in the worst possible way--these kinds of problems are no fun...

You said you found a hotfix. Could you pass along the URL? I've searched and couldn't find anything! But my search skills aren't what they probably should be. Thanks for the help!

Paul, sorry for the late reply, been kinda sick around here and caught up with the Chinese new year and all.

Here is the link to the hotfix you requested:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2486635

Bear in mind that I accept no responsibility if the hotfix does not work or if it screws up your comp. Click on the top left to request to download the hotfix from MS. Make sure you select the appropriate version (x86 or x64). Provide an email address and they'll email you the file to install the hotfix.

There seems to be a problem with the Bluetooth service, but my T400 does not have the BT module installed.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For ... eea5754947

Again, I believe the best fix I read somewhere is to go in to the device manager and "reset" all the USB hubs by uninstalling them, restarting your comp, and then reinstalling the hubs one by one.

Hope these help. My workaround for this is to just eject in the My Computer window.

[Paul Unger]

Here is the link to the hotfix you requested:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2486635

Bear in mind that I accept no responsibility if the hotfix does not work or if it screws up your comp.

Thanks for the link, chinoco02. I had a look at it, but it doesn't seem to scratch quite where I'm itching... I'm going to search for other solutions (and until then, eject from Explorer). Thanks again!

[chinoco02]

Here is the link to the hotfix you requested:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2486635

Bear in mind that I accept no responsibility if the hotfix does not work or if it screws up your comp.

Thanks for the link, chinoco02. I had a look at it, but it doesn't seem to scratch quite where I'm itching... I'm going to search for other solutions (and until then, eject from Explorer). Thanks again!

Paul, it seems the issue is when the devices and printers window takes a long time to populate the list. Seems there might be a 'stuck' device that was plugged into one of the USB ports. I've noticed it speeds up after I did two things:

a) opening up the devices and printers window and let it populate

and

b) go into services.msc, look for bluetooth service and changing it from manual to automatic

Doing these two things will certainly speed up the 'Safely Remove Hardware icon' but not completely instantaneous. I know it did for me.

Or we could just wait for Win7 SP1 which should be arriving at the end of this month!

Geoff

[Paul Unger]

Paul, it seems the issue is when the devices and printers window takes a long time to populate the list. Seems there might be a 'stuck' device that was plugged into one of the USB ports. I've noticed it speeds up after I did two things:

a) opening up the devices and printers window and let it populate

and

b) go into services.msc, look for bluetooth service and changing it from manual to automatic

Doing these two things will certainly speed up the 'Safely Remove Hardware icon' but not completely instantaneous. I know it did for me.

I checked my bluetooth service and it is set to manual. I hate services running that I don't need, so I left that alone. But I did open the 'devices and printers' window (which took a long time), clicked the 'SRH' icon, and--my goodness--it was fast! I ejected the flash drive and then plugged it in again to see if the changes stuck. They didn't... I clicked the 'SRH' icon and waited and waited and waited--just like before. So, I opened 'devices and printers' and--boom--fast as it should be. Obviously something up with 'devices and printers'. It's a zero-sum gain to open 'devices and printers' to eject a flash drive when it takes as long for that to open as it does for the 'SRH' icon to do the job...

But thanks for your help. I may try the bluetooth thing if I get really adventurous!

Edit 1: [five minutes later] OK, I searched the web for "'devices and printers' slow to open". Found this and this. I have no idea what the implications of setting one's default printer to the MS XPS Document Writer, but I did it and--my goodness & boom--'SRH' works like a charm! I'm just a bit leery about the MS XPS printer thing. More research required.

Edit 2: [on further reflection] I'm thinking the fact that my former default printer was a network printer (on a network that I'm no longer joined to) is the real culprit... I need to keep that printer, because I do join to that network to print, but I guess I can't have it as my default. Darn.

[K0LO]

Paul:

If you're using Windows 7 you can set different default printers for each network that you normally connect to. Open Devices and Printers, click on a printer, then click on Manage Default Printers on the toolbar.

[Paul Unger]

Thanks, K0LO. I'll give that a try. Still learning W7... Every little bit helps!