USB Mass Storage Device / Safely Remove Hardware

Hello All

Today I zeroed my old Vaio desktop and installed XP-Pro. I retrieved what I thought were all the 'originally pre-installed' drivers for my model from here and everything works.

However, I can't seem to get rid of the Safely Remove icon from the system tray.

It shows the following details when I tick 'show device properties':

USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE
+Sony UMH-U HS-MS USB Device (D/)
+Sony UMH-U HS-CF USB Device (E/)
+Sony UMH-U HS-FM USB Device (F/)

Even if I 'stop' these, while the icon does then disappear, it's back in the tray with the above detail after reboot.

D, E and F are visible in Explorer.

I've tried all USB ports and they all work - a stick is always assigned drive letter J.

I've tried updating the driver for each device, pointing Device Manager to both the original Sony DVD that came with the box (yes, it's that old!) and the drivers folder I pulled from the Sony website - but I always get the 'best driver already installed' result.

I've tried changing the policy for each to Optimise for quick removal / Enable write caching and back. No effect at all!

Am I missing something here - is this something to do with device enumeration, something about which I know very, very little...?

Grateful for any pointers

philby

 

The device names resemble various flash card technologies such as https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/CompactFlash. If you don't have any USB sticks attached, these devices are most probably related to your card reader at the front of the laptop. For some reason, they show up as removable devices, altough there is no card attached.

 

Thanks for your reply - looks like it is the card reader. I found a guy with the exact same problem here (in 2005), but no relief!

Curious to know how I can get XP to see these USB devices as permanent fixtures and not removable...

Do card readers even need drivers?

philby

 

As you can see, the card reader is recognized as a USB media. So it should use native Windows USB drivers and therefore no other drivers are needed.

Basically you can't change these drives as permanent. It is because of the hot-plug functionality. But I think you can circumvent the problem by hiding the drives when not in use.

I think it was this software. There is some discussion on Wilders forum too, I just couldn't find it in a fast search. The link goes straight to the explanation, see the bottom of the page.

http://safelyremove.com/help/ht_dlm.htm

Hope this helps. This is a issue with many computers, and I don't know a real solution for it.

 

Thanks for that Spysnake - I understand now about the card reader being connected to internal USB and Windows assuming it's removable - I think...!

What I don't understand is why the Safely Remove icon with those entries was not present in the original XP set up that came with the Vaio - the icon and entries only appeared after I did a clean install with an old retail disk...

Maybe Windows was somehow set differently for the OEM install such that the card reader was regarded as permanent?

philby

I appreciate your taking the time to answer.

 

Found an idea here. Maybe I'll give that a shot when I'm back on the machine, just out of interest...though I'm not sure about what the '= 6' is for...

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

you have to set the "capabilities" attribute in registry to dword hexdecimal = 6, to unlist from the safe removal, set to = 10.

0. make sure u know what you are doing.

1. on XP, right click on My Computer - Properties - Hardware - Device Manager, navigate to USB controler, and open properties for usb mass storage device. go to details tab, and note the device instance value ie. USB\VID_414&PID\22AF000000

2. run registry.exe navigate to that key local machine\system\controlset001\enum\usb\VID_414&PID\22AF000000 edit permission, set everyone to write, then click on "capabilities" and set to "6" OR "10", which one you prefer.

3. click on safe to remove icon, or if the icon is missing, run this "c:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll"

4. to remove other items in the safe removal list, just find the device instance ID, ie. cd rom, network card etc, and set value to "10", to add set value to "6"\

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

EDIT: OK, so '= 6' is to add to safely Remove...

 

Uwe Sieber knows everything there is to know about USB:

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

 

Not a free workaround but I have been using this software for a while and am quite happy with it.
http://safelyremove.com/
It allows you to hide any device you want. Plus it has a setting on Windows 7 (maybe other version) that allows you to power off a device on disconnect and you can reconnect a device without having to unplug/replug it if you change your mind.

 

I have used Safely Remove and recently upgraded to Zentimo (from the same publisher) which offers more functionality than Safely Remove. A very nice little program well worth the cost.

Zentimo is a powerful external storage manager
www.Zentimo.com is an external drive manager. It saves time and extends user abilities on active work with flash-drives, portable drives, card readers and other gadgets.

Meet Zentimo 1.0, a Swiss army knife for your ... - USB Safely Remove
www.safelyremove.com/blog/en/zentimo-1-0-final - Cached
28 posts - 3 authors - Last post: 4 May
Zentimo is the successor to 'USB Safely Remove', our original, extended device dismounting/removal tool. By comparison, Zentimo is truly a ...

 

Thanks for all those links!

It isn't really a problem as such - I'd just like to understand what is different between the original Vaio XP install and my fresh retail install - why the card reader was not recognised as removable before but now is...!!

The original was Home, but mine was Pro - but surely that wouldn't be it, would it?

philby

 

This might give some additional info, about 4/5 down the page:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html