How do you remove "Safely Remove Hardware" Icon?

By Cloud Constructors
in Tips, Tweaks & Customization

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Bold_Fortune

Posted
Posted

I think I found it.

I'm wondering if it has to do with this file:

hotplug.dll.....(Safely Remove Hardware applet, or HotPlug Manager). Displays a System Tray icon with which you can unplug (or eject) USB (Universal Serial Bus) devices.

If so, it would seem that you could unregister or delete it this file to make the System Tray icon go away.

If it doesn't delete for you, it could be because the file is in use. You can then, either move the file to another location with a batch file, and reboot, or delete the file in safe mode.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Neowinian

jstangroome

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I have an Acer Aspire 1693 notebook and it shows the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray thanks to my built-in (yet changeable) DVD drive. I think that rather than looking at a way to hide or kill the SRH icon we should be questioning why it only shows it for particular hardware.

Perhaps there is a value in the hardware driver's INF file, in the registry, or in the driver SYS files themselves that tells Windows, "hey, I'm removable!", and then Windows decides to show the icon. If we can find this value we can hide the icon for devices we never remove but still retain it for the occasional hardware that needs it.

- Jason

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Grand Master

cork1958

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The safely remove hardware icon is a system file that comes with XP Home. You CAN NOT remove it. Hide it, yes, but NOT remove. That is, unless you don't have any USB slots on the computer at all.

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Bold_Fortune

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I think that rather than looking at a way to hide or kill the SRH icon we should be questioning why it only shows it for particular hardware.

- Jason

What he said.

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Neowinian

jstangroome

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I have done some research. The SRH icon is getting information from the registry under the key HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSetxxx\Enum\. For my Matshu****a DVD drive there are keys under IDE\Matsu****a\Modelxxxx\. The particular value that is relevant is the Capabilities DWORD which contains several flags ORed together. The value 2 means Eject Supported (eject hardware not media) and the value 4 means Removable so my Matsu****a has 6 in the Capabilities field.

I tried changing the permissions on this registry key and changing the Capabilities to zero but after a reboot the value had reverted back to 6 and the SRH icon was still there. I'm guessing these registry keys are just a cache for the real data that is coming from some other file or is being reported directly by the driver itself.

Guess I'll have to poke around some more.

- Jason

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  • 3 months later...
Rookie

molitar

Posted
Posted

Please re-up HideSRHi.zip the one on here is corrupt and I had a major HD crash lost my entire C drive and getting everything reinstalled that I do have. But I can't find another copy of HideSRHi.exe at all.

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Grand Master

Colin-uk Veteran

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  • Veteran
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^ Unnecessary.

DigeratiPrime's post (#35) in the thread linked by him above says:

Further down the thread it also says, that this method also remove the sound icon from the tray, so if you dont mind loosing that too, then use this method ;)

im in the same situation looking for a solution, atm im currently running HideSRHI.exe manually after login :p

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Neowinian

Nevermind2006

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Thanks ALOT, man!!

I spent 2 days digging Inet trying to find SELECTIVE fix for SRH problem - just to disable SRH for SOME of my SATA drives (need nForce drivers to make RAID working). Unfortunately, my raid is not where Windows boots from, so it just let to remove any of raid disks on the fly. It's BAD in my case, 'cose dumb users can easily crash raid in this way :) And hiding SRH icon is not a solution for me - i need it to remove other devices.

So my idea is (based on your research):

1. Change permissions to registry key you mentioned allowing write "Capabilities" value

2. Make small .bat file setting desired "Capabilities" and put it to startup

In this way I got normal SRH icon with NO SATA RAID DISK in it!!! Just happy now :))

Cheers!

I have done some research. The SRH icon is getting information from the registry under the key HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSetxxx\Enum\. For my Matshu****a DVD drive there are keys under IDE\Matsu****a\Modelxxxx\. The particular value that is relevant is the Capabilities DWORD which contains several flags ORed together. The value 2 means Eject Supported (eject hardware not media) and the value 4 means Removable so my Matsu****a has 6 in the Capabilities field.

I tried changing the permissions on this registry key and changing the Capabilities to zero but after a reboot the value had reverted back to 6 and the SRH icon was still there. I'm guessing these registry keys are just a cache for the real data that is coming from some other file or is being reported directly by the driver itself.

Guess I'll have to poke around some more.

- Jason

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Blazkowicz

Posted
Posted

the hideSRHI.exe method sucks. my safely remove hardware icon is here for the USB wifi key (which I don't plan to ever unplug for the incoming monthes). hideSHRI launches at startup, displays some annoying error message ; then later my network connection and remove icon show up and stay there.

that's how it is for me ;)

so, I did the replace stobject.dll with dud.exe : safely remove hardware goes away, along with task manager's CPU meter and wireless connection status. CPU meter is not a problem, as long as my task manager is always running in the background (it's run minimized at startup). wifi connection was useful (it's an adhoc network) but I can live without it.

it's really nice to have only two useful tray icons at launch :D (and one more when I launch Gaim)

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Grand Master

Trong

Posted
Posted

So you could have just unplugged it and hid the wireless connection icon... You, my friend, make things too complicated. And yes, you can have a wireless connection RUNNING without the icon.

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Blazkowicz

Posted
Posted

complicate life to simplify it, I often do that.

but I'm the kind of guy to think editing a few files and replacing dll is rather simple afterall.

I know about the "Show icon in notification area when connected" checkbox, but windows doesn't seem to care about it and this was not what I was after.

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Blazkowicz

Posted
Posted

to quickly know about the connection status when you no longer have the icons : I remembered there's a network tab in task manager :D. add "bytes sent " and "bytes received" columns (view menu) and you're set.

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  • 1 year later...
Rookie

savesheep

Posted
Posted

I found a fix for it.

Its because they are SATA drives. (atleast for me they are.) Sata are actually removable devices, so we have to tell windows not to allow them to be removable.

Go here in the registry:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvata - 32bit

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvata64 - 64bit

and create a DWORD value called DisableRemovable with value 1.

Restart and you're good to go!

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Rising Star

slippery

Posted
Posted

For the life of me I cannot understand why theres so many people making a mountain out of a mole hill. The problem lies in the drivers installed from the mobo setup disc. Go to "add/remove" and uninstall the ide drivers loaded by the setup disc, and let windows use its own set of device drivers to handle it. This is so old its not funny, I researched this years ago and found this fix. No problems whatsoever afterwards, honest. :whistle:

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Rookie

savesheep

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For the life of me I cannot understand why theres so many people making a mountain out of a mole hill. The problem lies in the drivers installed from the mobo setup disc. Go to "add/remove" and uninstall the ide drivers loaded by the setup disc, and let windows use its own set of device drivers to handle it. This is so old its not funny, I researched this years ago and found this fix. No problems whatsoever afterwards, honest. :whistle:

fantastic for you! not to be a butthead, but you said the IDE drivers.

The hard drives we're having a problem with are SATA. And SATA drives ARE hot swappable. So you have to tell windows xp not to allow them to be. No matter the drivers you install.

Windows VISTA, on the other handle, you can disable this through system. XP is older than your casual sata drive; thus doesnt know how to use them correctly.

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  • 6 years later...
Apprentice

Zero3K

Posted
Posted

I have discovered a way to remove that icon, which involves the following steps:

 

1. Download Dud (http://www3.telus.net/_/dud/'>http://www3.telus.net/_/dud/) and Replacer (http://www3.telus.net/_/replacer/).

2. Rename dud.exe to stobject.dll.

3. Give Ownership of the stobject.dll in \Windows\System32 to Administrators and give Full Permission to it.

4. Run Replacer to replace the original stobject.dll with the renamed dud.exe.

5. Restart the PC.

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