Cannot "Safely Remove Hardware" if plugged in before boot

If a USB drive is plugged into the system before power on/boot up then that drive can not be "Safely Removed" as it will always say that it is in use, even if you dont even view the contents.

Ive tried it with a few flash drives and a USB3 hard drive. If you plug them in after the computer boots up then its fine. Im assuming its some kind of startup scan that remains active monitoring the drives, preventing safe removal.

This was tested on a fresh install of Windows 7 x64 and the newest Nod32 v4.

 

Open explorer. Right click properties, advance ->choose optimize for quick removal.
Done

 

Do you have the block removable media option set ?

 

Quick Removal is set by Default, and block removable media isn't set.

Ive tested this on 2 separate fresh installs so its not other software or custom settings causing it. Ive even tested it with the newest v5 beta.

The only thing I can think of is that its either Windows 7 SP1's change to USB that's causing issue with how Nod32 handles USB drives, or an update to Nod32 changed something (older versions of v4 didn't do this, but that was before Win7 SP1, so I don't know the root cause)

Since quick remove is set any data being written to it gets done in realtime, so you really don't need to safely remove, but it is just an extra step to be sure that nothing is still using it. And sure enough with SP1 and Nod32 v4/5 it is still being accessed to some degree.

The only difference with v5 is that even if its plugged in after, you cant safely remove, regardless if you select scan now or scan later on the popup prompt when inserting a USB drive.

 

Try disabling Anti-Stealth and restarting the computer. With v5 you shouldn't have had any problems if you tried it after July 28th.

 

Antistealth doesn't seem to change anything with v5. I installed it around 2 months ago and it says its on the newest version (5.0.84.0)

One thing I noticed is that if you never explore the drive then it can safely remove no problem, whether you let it scan the drive on connection or just x out of that box. But if you explore the drive with explorer, it cant be safely removed after.

If its connected before system boot then it doesn't matter if you explore it or not, safely remove says its in use.

 

I have the same problem everytime i put my external drive in my desktop it dont show up but as i do a reboot of the computer with the external on it shows up. i usin the rc candidate the 4 wasnt doing that, hope yall get this clear up.

 

does it happen only under w7 ?

 

i did notice too , on sevaral pc
is there a fix?

 

I've had this behavior for quite awhile, with W7 and perhaps Vista too. I never related it to Nod32, I always thought it to be some Windows dinky dou.

 

I have never used "Safely Remove Hardware"
I just pull it out, never been a problem
got tired of windows beeping and complaining when I did
so I just removed it from Windows, I never had any problems
removing disk drives or Flash drives, at least not yet

 

i just tried a new program (for me), USB Safely Remove, which will show the files preventing the USB device from being removed. It showed several System and Svchost files locking the removable disk, I did not see any reference to Nod32.

 

Hi, have a look at your "system protection" and "defragmentation" settings.
An USB-drive plugged in before system boot might get included both in the automatic "system protection" and the "defragmentation" plans.

You should be able to exclude a drive from both schemes.

 

I do not have either of those features enabled (protection or auto defrag). I have attached a picture of the files locking my drive. They look to be Windows system type files of some sort.