Here I sit, for 20 minutes, with a drive connected via USB that contains sensitive data. Despite my best efforts, I am unable to "Safely Remove Hardware". It's not so much that there's probably a file handle locked that I can't possibly unlock (without writing my own software to do it) but that any time you remove a drive like this without properly dismounting it first, you are in for a stern talking-to. Windows gets angry with you if you just rip out the USB cable. Windows berates you for it. It's possible that forcing a drive dismounted could cause it to lose data (and I've seen it happen). This is still not the worst part. When I attempt to dismount the drive properly, Windows only says:
The device 'Generic volume' cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later.
Later? How soon is that? What kind of shit is this? "Try again later"? Why is Windows being so general and non-specific? Is Windows going to tell me when it's done using my drive so I can finally dismount it as it has yelled at me before to do?
No.
So here I sit, clicking safely remove over and over again, hoping Windows will finally finish doing what it is doing. Nope, it won't dismount. Now I *have* to rip the cord out (or restart the computer) if I want to get my work done. Special thanks to Windows for being a hypocritical asshole. I'm glad file locks get hung up so often, because I really hate it when I want to delete an empty folder and Windows actually lets me delete it.

// 08-09-05 (mm-dd-yy) —–
I forgot to mention: I usually use ForceDel.exe to unlock files and folders (it's a champ – just drag a file onto the .exe and presto, it's unlocked — unless it really *is* in use). It happens so frequently at work that ForceDel.exe is sitting right on my desktop, ready to have things dropped on it. (I'm lazy).

Edit (10-11-07): this is exactly as annoying in Vista as it is in XP and 2000. Ugh.