Windows 10 won't eject USB thumb drive

I'm struggling with a peculiar little problem. My old faithful windows 10 computer will never eject the USB thumb drive. It doesn't ever show any errors. Its quite puzzling. I have several usb devices currently working including a 4TB usb hard drive, usb keyboard and mouse and a Fujitsu USB scanner. When I plug in the usb thumb drive, Windows makes the familiar boing noise and I can view the contents of the drive, but when I click the bottom right icon to eject, all goes well but explorer still sees the drive. I can manually remove the thumb drive from the usb port and Windows remains silent.
Looking in explorer, the device still appears and I am able to browse the I: (in this case) as if the thumb drive is still plugged in. I wonder why Windows thinks the drive is still plugged in. No errors appear in the error log. If I look in computer management/Disk Management, that just hangs. It just reports: "Loading disk configuration information."
Also if I look in Device Manager, under disk drives, there is a device there: OCZ ATV USB Device. (That is the thumb drive in question.)
When I try to reboot, the system just hangs and requires a hard reset (or pulling out the power cord.)
Do folks think this is a hardware or software issue?
I tried uninstalling the device from device manager but it never seems to actually work - just a green progress bar back and forth across the screen forever.
Hardware:
MSI 970A-G46 Motherboard (Socket AM3+ with New BIOS (B2 Stepping ready) PCI Express Gen3 OC Genie 2, 2 SATA 3 Cables, AMD970+ SB950
AMD FX8320 3.5 Ghz 16MB cache 8-core Unlocked Black edition 125W Desktop Processor
I do notice this in my error log:
The machine-default permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission for the COM Server application with CLSID
{C2F03A33-21F5-47FA-B4BB-156362A2F239}
Wondering if it's related.

I'm reluctant to reformat and reinstall windows but I'm getting concerned that will be my only course of action.

Thoughts?
Selwyn

Hmm. I guess this didn't inspire any thoughts. I guess Windows just got confused or I have some flakey hardware. Time to reformat and reinstall all my software. yuck!

Try right clicking the drive in Explorer and selecting eject or try a utility such as Unlocker

i had a simular problem and i used partition wizard 10.1 free version to fix it. now the drive actually disappears from pc when i unplug it and works perfectly when plugged in.

Thanks Ztruker,
that is a fascinating answer. I'm puzzled what the reason is for creating the environment variable. It doesn't appear to be used once you create it. Is it some sort of easter egg?

thanks
Selwyn

Ztruker said:

If you connect a lot of USB devices to multiple ports then give this a try:

• Shutdown and unplug all USB devices, except USB mouse or keyboard.
• Create a new Environment variable called devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices and set it's value to 1 as follows:
  
  • Right click on This PC and select Properties
  • Click on Advanced System Settings at left
  • Click on the Environmental Variables button
  • Click the New button under the User variables for xxxxx" area.
  • Set the Variable name as: devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices
  • Set the Variable value to: 1
  • Click OK as needed to close all the windows you opened.
  
  
• Open Device Manager (Control Panel, System, Device Manager)
• Click on View then Show hidden devices.
• Scroll down to USB and click on the plus to expand it.
• Uninstall all the entries that are dimmed (greyed out), see below
• Shutdown and reboot, let Windows rediscover everything and load necessary drivers. This can take a few minutes, be patient.
• Reconnect your normal USB devices.

Now try the thumb drive, see what happens.

Here is a curious behaviour. I have Kaspersky anti-virus installed on this machine. When I plug in a thumb drive, Kaspersky offers to scan it but then hangs up when I give it the go-ahead. Right clicking on the thumb drive in explorer (is that what they call it these days?) and requesting a Kaspersky virus scan runs fine. This is super suspicious. I did try uninstall the greyed out hidden devices as suggested by Ztrucker but I am still getting the weird "eject" thing happening. Right click context menu, and eject does not eject the drive, it still appears in the "safely remove hardwire" icon on the toolbar...

Reinstall windows or do we think this is fixable?

Tried that - no luck. Unlocker says "No locking handles found" Thanks tho!

robgr said:

Try right clicking the drive in Explorer and selecting eject or try a utility such as Unlocker

Hows this for weird? Once I try to "eject" a thumb drive, windows explorer has all kinds of trouble making new folders on the main SSD. Like it is spinning in some kind of loop trying to deal with disk storage and not getting any cycles. I'm seriously thinking it's time to blow this drive and reinstall windows/apps/everything. yuck!