Comments on: Safely Remove Brainstem

By: Hani

Hani — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:19:00 +0000

Unlocker did not work for me to release an external USB hard drive. Process Explorer did not show any handles, removing the drive share didn't work, changing policies didn't work… in fact none of the methods worked…. In desperation I killed explorer.exe from task manager and restarted it. Then finally I was able to remove the hard drive.
This was on Windows 7 beta. My experience is that there is no one sure short method, you have to try a combination of these. Unlocker works most of the time though, and is a great tool, but it didn't work this time.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:45:49 +0000

Thanks for the excellent information posted so far. Like others, filemon did not reveal anything reading from/writing to the USB drive. Also, unlocker did not detect any file or directory being locked. Using Process Explorer, find, find handle (CTRL+F) and typed the drive letter of the USB drive. It revealed EXPLORER as the culprit to the root of the drive. I killed that one handle, and viola, USB removal succeeded.

Hope this helps.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 14:05:50 +0000

Hi there. Surfing on the web I found a software that was pretty usefull for your issue. It is called Autorun Virus Remover. Basically is an utility for Removable devices that can block autorun process on them. but also can perform an UNLOCK of the device without compromise data in it(something like linux unmount).

It is very easy to use. You can found it at autorun remover and unlocker tool review.

There is a free demo available. I hope this can help someone.

These are my 2 cents.

By: Bhavik Samani

Bhavik Samani — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:57:17 +0000

Hi guys, I had a similar problem and ripped my usb out once, ever since then I get an error message pop up when I start windows. It says 'Run Time error 52: Bad File Name or Number'.

The process is called 'RavDr.exe' and I'm sure it's got something to do with taking out the USB without stopping it.

Any ideas what the process 'RavDr.exe' does?

Any help would be much appreciated…

By: Tony Carr

Tony Carr — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:23:34 +0000

I had the same problem with an eSATA/USB external drive till I changed the drive's hardware properties to 'Optimise for Quick Removal' in all machines it is used on. This turned off drive caching. I also disable the Recycle Bin on external drives.

By: matthias

matthias — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:47:59 +0000

I too had Norton Utilities installed, the Unerase Wizard of which is an excellent programm other than most of the suite. Sometimes, though, according to unlocker, it is the cause of the problem that windows refuses to let the user remove an external usb drive. The solution proposed that one should disable unerase wizard for external drives is not useful if these drives are to be protected by Unerase. — I have had success by going to services (unerase runs as a service) and temporarily stopping the unerase service. Then remove drive, then restart service. simple as that. Make sure through unlocker that it is only norton that causes the problem.

By: Dustin Hoang

Dustin Hoang — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:59:01 +0000

SOLVING IT ONCE AND FOR ALL! SAFELY removing the USB drives! (FOR USB HARD DRIVES, possibly flash drives as well)

I've tried everything. Kllling explorer.exe and using both the Unlocker and Process Viewer programs. Nothing worked. I disabled indexing and closed my virus program. Still did not work. Finally, I found a solution.

A REAL simple SOLUTION:
Disable Windows Recovery for your USB Hard Drive letter under My Computer -> View System information -> System Restore Tab. Turn off monitoring for your USB hard drive. Now try disabling the hard drive. Worked excellent for me and I had this problem on BOTH WINDOWS XP and VISTA on 3 different computers using these OS's.

This is using a USB Antec Enclosure with a fan I bought for $40 and inside it a 1terabyte (1,000 gigabyte) hard drive. A lot of sensitive data is in it and I am glad I can now safely remove the USB hard drive. Good luck!

By: Silver Surfer

Silver Surfer — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:32:08 +0000

Have been using computers since steam driven DOS days, but never managed to sort out the 'device volume cannot etc' so just whipped out USB and camera cables willy-nilly. However, have just fitted an external disk for photographs and didn't want to risk losing all that so decided it was time to explore the 'forum ' field. Apart from it being a whole new world of really helpful folk, I've solved my problem thanks to this site. I downloaded Process Manager but not being a 'geek' (I mean that in a nice way) it all went over my head. However, today I downloaded Unlocker and to my absolute disbelieving delight, it's worked. Incidentally, it was Explorer.exe that was the problem. So thank you, all you helpful fellows out there. This old lady is charmed and delighted with you all!

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:41:23 +0000

After reading the previous posts I think that there are different and distinct problems. I am using both XP-Pro and Vista.

1. The 'Safely Remove' icon is for removing USB drives when you have set up your computer HD for 'Performance' with or without cache. You can check it out as follows: Right click on a HD partition in Explorer and in the window that opens click on the 'Hardware' tab (choose your computer HD from the list), click on 'Properties' and than on 'Policies'. You can now set it up for 'Quick Removal' or 'Performance'. The latter with or without cache.

2. If any program in either XP or Vista will not close down than it is easy to do so in Task Manager where you can just click on 'End Task' under the 'Programs tab'. Task Manager can be quickly bought up in XP with Ctrl+Alt+Delete or in Vista by right clicking on the task bar and choosing it from the menu.

By: Luke

Luke — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:43:14 +0000

another issues with the remove hardware feature in windows xp and amazingly vista! is it does not show what each drive is called. if you have a few mass storage devices connected it does not display the name of each drive, only the drive letter, which is useless. also i have a habit of ejecting things which i didn't want to like my wireless usb device.

it's crazy normally i have to restart my computer just to eject a hard drive, also noticed that windows media player 11 is normally the cause, always happens when playing back video clips. time to reboot!

By: unlocker is awesome!

unlocker is awesome! — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:05:32 +0000

another vote for unlocker!

By: BEST OPTION UNLOCKER!!!

BEST OPTION UNLOCKER!!! — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:20:38 +0000

BEST OPTION UNLOCKER!!!

By: Phrank

Phrank — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:28:45 +0000

Why was my post removed ??

By: phrank

phrank — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:50:48 +0000

I also am plagued by: "The device 'generic volume' cannt be stopped…" message. I believe it because of extra partitions in a drive.
I have a 500g WD My Book external hardrive & it is partitioned into two parts. I recently installed Unlocker, but it will not recognize the drive, because of the two partitions. Is there a way to be able to show the 500 on my desktop so that it can be recognized as a single drive ?

By: paul

paul — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 04:47:39 +0000

Hey, process explorer from sysinternals worked great. You can search for a handle ("find" menu). I just usde the drive letter followed by a colon as the search sting (f:), and it showed me the open handle. If you choose "show lower pane" in the view menu, and select "handles" (as opposed to dlls) for the "lower pane view", you can just right click on the offending handle and choose "close". Although exiting the program that the handle is in would surely be the better thning to do.

By: gdin

gdin — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 03:25:59 +0000

Yup…unlocker ROCKS!!!…A bud of mine accidently damaged the firmware on my usb drive when he just pulled it out. all my data was in that 40gb drive. imagine the time and works to rebuild the data.

Anyway after buying a new Seagate 80gb, that message pops up and really got me worried. thanks to CaPMAN…and others mentioned about unlocker. Now i am not a worried dud anymore. thanks again.

By: VitalStatistic63

VitalStatistic63 — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 07:12:27 +0000

Wow. Good tip. I downloaded and installed UnLocker and it worked a treat. I didn't actually use it to unlock the drive, but when I right clicked the drive icon and chose UnLock, it opened a dialog and showed me that OpenOfficeOrg2.1 was holding files for quick opening. So I closed the OpenOffice SysTray application and then was able to Safely Remove my drive. :D

I figured it was safer doing that than terminating applications with the big red button.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:56:53 +0000

I had same problem with a USB pen drive and Unlocker did not cure it, but after right-clicking on the drive and choosing eject, I found I could stop it OK.

By: Levitt

Levitt — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:07:47 +0000

This problem left me quite worried. After scanning through the Processes under Task Manager, there was no indication that the files of my portable hard disk were in used. Since my computer has two accounts, i simply logged off and logged in again. It was only then that Windows allowed me to remove the hardware safetly.

By: LJP

LJP — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 02:55:37 +0000

This happens to me all the time. Then suddenly it says "you can now safely remove hardware" or words to that effect. This might happen after 20 times of not working.