USB Drives plugged in but No Safely Remove Icon in Tray, and

smartcooky · 26 Oct 2016

....no drives listed in Hardware List.

When I plug USB drives in, the Safely Remove Hardware icon does not appear in in system tray (its not hidden either)

First, I went to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Select which Icons Appear on the Taskbar...

.. and found it was already on

Next I tried using the solution in this post...

Solved No safely remove icon in tray any more after Windows 10 Anniversary up - Windows 10 Forums

...making a shortcut from "rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll", but when I run the shortcut, there are no devices listed...

(in this screenshot, you can see two USB drives in the Explorer window in the BG but nothing listed in the panel. )

NOTE: They are listed in Disk Management and in the Device Manager under Disk Drives, and they function just fine..
I think the Safely Remove Hardware icon is not appearing because despite being detected and showing in Explorer, Device Manager and Disk Management, its not being listed in this panel for some reason.

NOTE2: I recently installed a new motherboard.

ASUS B150M-A
CPU Intel Core i5 - 6500 (3.2 GHz)
Mem 4096 MB (DDR4 - 2133)

I am 100% sure it was working before that, but I cannot say for sure if it was still working after that.
A friend suggested that it might be a setting in BIOS, but I have looked through it and nothing stands out.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

ETA: this is not the system listed in my System Specs page. That is another computer which I still have.

smartcooky · 29 Oct 2016

No-one can offer any suggestions?

CountMike · 30 Oct 2016

Are they shown as Removable device in Disk Management ?
In Device manager > Policies > Removal policy, are they set for Quick removal ?

smartcooky · 31 Oct 2016

CountMike said:

Are they shown as Removable device in Disk Management ?

In Disk Management they are listed as "Removable Drive" in the box on the left

In Device Manager
- under "Disk Drives" they are listed as "USB Devices"
- under "USB Serial Bus Controllers" they are listed as "USB Mass Storage devices"
- under "Portable Deivces" they are listed under their drive letter

CountMike said:

In Device manager > Policies > Removal policy, are they set for Quick removal ?

I do not appear to have a "Policies" option in my Device Manager

CountMike · 31 Oct 2016

Sorry, missed one step Device manager > Disk drives (properties for particular disk) > Policies > Removal policy.

smartcooky · 31 Oct 2016

When I go to Device Manager>Disk drives and click on the Properties for each drive, this is what I get

This is the USB Stick - Drive G:
No "Policies" tab

This is a Portable HDD - Drive H:
No "Policies" tab

This is a Portable HDD - Drive I:
It has a "Policies" tab (shown) but nothing about a Removal Policy

CountMike · 31 Oct 2016

This is what I get for all USB sticks:

smartcooky · 31 Oct 2016

I have another computer at work that runs Windows 10. I will check to see what it says when I get there.

ETA: Right, so I have done this.

I brought with me the actual USB stick (which gave me no Policies tab at all) and the Silicon Power 1TB drive that did give me a Policies tab but with no Removal Policy option panel. I did this to eliminate any chance that the problem might lie with the stick and/or the HDD.

The computer at work is the same version of Windows 10 Home

The USB stick does give me the Policies tab with the Removal Policy panel

The USB HDD does give me the Policies tab with the Removal Policy panel AND the Write-caching Policy panel

I have another Seagate USB HDD at work, and it gives me both panels on the Polcies tab. I then checked with several other USB Sticks I have at work, and every one of them gives me just the Removal Policy panel on the Policies tab.

I think we have isolated the issue to that missing Removal Policy panel.

So, what creates that missing panel? Could this be something missing in the registry?