Suddenly can't safely remove external USB drives

Hasn't been a problem until now. The system won't let go of a couple
of USB external drives. Click the icon. hit Stop and I get a "can be
stopped try later" message.

Tried using Unlocker, still doesn't let me even when it says there are
no handles.

Running XP Pro SP3.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Doc wrote:
Hasn't been a problem until now. The system won't let go of a couple
of USB external drives. Click the icon. hit Stop and I get a "can be
stopped try later" message.

Tried using Unlocker, still doesn't let me even when it says there are
no handles.

Running XP Pro SP3.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

And in a previous posting, you were fooling around with Windows Search 4.

Any chance the two are related ?

Maybe indexing is running on the external drives ? Or something
you thought would help your search result, is now preventing safe
removal.

Paul

On Jan 12, 2:05*am, Paul wrote:
Doc wrote:
Hasn't been a problem until now. The system won't let go of a couple
of USB external drives. Click the icon. hit Stop and I get a "can be
stopped try later" message.

Tried using Unlocker, still doesn't let me even when it says there are
no handles.

Running XP Pro SP3.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

And in a previous posting, you were fooling around with Windows Search 4.

Any chance the two are related ?


Don't know but it wasn't doing this previously with WS4 running. I'd
actually never seen WS4 before, it must have been included in a
Windows update. At first I thought it was annoying but it really
speeds up searches exponentially faster. Finds files across 5 drives
much, much faster than it would find a file on 1 drive with the usual
windows search assistant. It's very useful to me now that I'm trying
to clean up drives, get rid of redundant files.

On 1/12/2012 6:59 AM, Doc wrote:
On Jan 12, 2:05 am, wrote:
Doc wrote:
Hasn't been a problem until now. The system won't let go of a couple
of USB external drives. Click the icon. hit Stop and I get a "can be
stopped try later" message.

Tried using Unlocker, still doesn't let me even when it says there are
no handles.

Running XP Pro SP3.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

And in a previous posting, you were fooling around with Windows Search 4.

Any chance the two are related ?


Don't know but it wasn't doing this previously with WS4 running. I'd
actually never seen WS4 before, it must have been included in a
Windows update. At first I thought it was annoying but it really
speeds up searches exponentially faster. Finds files across 5 drives
much, much faster than it would find a file on 1 drive with the usual
windows search assistant. It's very useful to me now that I'm trying
to clean up drives, get rid of redundant files.

I just happened to check giveawayoftheday.com this morning and just the
tool you need is being given away.

USB Safely Remove 4.7
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/usb-safely-remove-47/

I use both "USB Safely Remove" and "Zentimo" which are produced by the
same company. Zentimo has a bit more features like testing drive speeds,
etc. But both are very good and I can't see having Windows without
either or.

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v9.0
Centrino Core2 Duo 2.17 GHz - 1.5GB - Windows 7 SP1

On Jan 12, 8:20*am, BillW50 wrote:

I just happened to check giveawayoftheday.com this morning and just the
tool you need is being given away.

USB Safely Remove 4.7http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/usb-safely-remove-47/


Thanks. Hadn't heard of the site before. Tried it, still having the
same problem. svchost.exe is the process that keeps coming up as
having a lock on the drive.

On 1/12/2012 8:23 AM, Doc wrote:
On Jan 12, 8:20 am, wrote:

I just happened to check giveawayoftheday.com this morning and just the
tool you need is being given away.

USB Safely Remove 4.7http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/usb-safely-remove-47/


Thanks. Hadn't heard of the site before. Tried it, still having the
same problem. svchost.exe is the process that keeps coming up as
having a lock on the drive.

I rarely have a problem with safely remove. As it is usually like
Explorer is looking at it or something. But USB Safely Remove has a
force remove feature. Have you tried that? Windows should let it go then.

Svchost.exe is part of Windows and does a lot of things. See:

What is svchost.exe?
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...is-svchost-exe

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v9.0
Centrino Core2 Duo 2.17 GHz - 1.5GB - Windows 7 SP1

From: "Doc"

Hasn't been a problem until now. The system won't let go of a couple
of USB external drives. Click the icon. hit Stop and I get a "can be
stopped try later" message.

Tried using Unlocker, still doesn't let me even when it says there are
no handles.

Running XP Pro SP3.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Some utility or program is holding the drive or a file's handle open on the device.

For examples let's say the USB External Drive is "E:". Some program or utility is either
looking at "E:" or "E:\somefile" and thus the message.

You can use Sysinternal Process Explorer to find out.

Assuming "E:" for this discussion, load Process Explorer.
From the pull-down menu choose; Find -- file or handle
enter; e:

and it will show you what application is holding open the handle.


--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

Finally had success. Apparently it was the Windows Search -
searchindexer.exe After killing that I can remove and restart it
using USB Safely remove.

From: "Doc"

Finally had success. Apparently it was the Windows Search -
searchindexer.exe After killing that I can remove and restart it
using USB Safely remove.

How did you determine that EXE was holding the handle open ?
Did you use my Sysinternals Process Explorer suggestion ?


--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

On Jan 14, 10:35*pm, "David H. Lipman"
wrote:
From: "Doc"

Finally had success. Apparently it was the Windows Search -
searchindexer.exe *After killing that I can remove and restart it
using USB Safely remove.

How did you determine that EXE was holding the handle open ?


It was basically a hunch. I'd never seen WSA 4 until recently. It must
have been part of a recent update, this isn't the first install of XP
Pro on this machine. It does make searching a lot quicker - in fact
for my current purposes of organizing some bloated drives I've let
accumulate clutter, searching for redundancies it's indispensable, but
I've noticed it seems to be all pervasive, I suppose it's constantly
checking all drives for new or moved files.


Did you use my Sysinternals Process Explorer suggestion ?


Yes, to kill the process altogether. Neither it nor USB Safely Remove
named searchindexer.exe directly as the culprit. PE came bringing up a
handle under svchost.exe when I entered G: in the "find" search. As it
happens, I first discovered Process Explorer not too long ago, to
solve the issue of folders and files that wouldn't delete. Also the
excellent companion video "The Case Of The Unexplained" by the Micro
$oft guru Mark Russinovich which I've turned into a DVD, since it
gives some good insight into the workings of Windows. I've since
learned there are several COTU talks he's given, I'll probably save
the others as well.

From: "Doc"

On Jan 14, 10:35 pm, "David H. Lipman"
wrote:
From: "Doc"

Finally had success. Apparently it was the Windows Search -
searchindexer.exe After killing that I can remove and restart it
using USB Safely remove.

How did you determine that EXE was holding the handle open ?


It was basically a hunch. I'd never seen WSA 4 until recently. It must
have been part of a recent update, this isn't the first install of XP
Pro on this machine. It does make searching a lot quicker - in fact
for my current purposes of organizing some bloated drives I've let
accumulate clutter, searching for redundancies it's indispensable, but
I've noticed it seems to be all pervasive, I suppose it's constantly
checking all drives for new or moved files.


Did you use my Sysinternals Process Explorer suggestion ?


Yes, to kill the process altogether. Neither it nor USB Safely Remove
named searchindexer.exe directly as the culprit. PE came bringing up a
handle under svchost.exe when I entered G: in the "find" search. As it
happens, I first discovered Process Explorer not too long ago, to
solve the issue of folders and files that wouldn't delete. Also the
excellent companion video "The Case Of The Unexplained" by the Micro
$oft guru Mark Russinovich which I've turned into a DVD, since it
gives some good insight into the workings of Windows. I've since
learned there are several COTU talks he's given, I'll probably save
the others as well.

Thanx for the update.


--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 03:58:53 -0800 (PST), Doc
wrote:

On Jan 14, 10:35*pm, "David H. Lipman"
wrote:
From: "Doc"

Finally had success. Apparently it was the Windows Search -
searchindexer.exe *After killing that I can remove and restart it
using USB Safely remove.
Did you decide if you want Windows Search to index files on devices
that might get modified while connected to another machine?

You need to address two problems:
.. If you don't want Windows Search to index such devices
This is discussed in:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307980
"How To Configure the Search Companion in Windows XP"
I couldn't try things to see if it actually worked.

For an unofficial method, I found

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...ht-way/5533688
"Configuring Windows XP's Indexing Service the right way"




.. If you do want the files on disks that are only sometimes connected
then you should be concerned about how to make sure the index gets
updated when the device put online. I couldn't determine if
changed files would be indexed or entries for deleted files would be
removed, or if the partition would be completely reindexed.

I found this for Vista:

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/de...-search-vista/
"Deleted Files Are Shown When Performing a Search in Windows Vista"

The method described rebuilds the entire index, not just the entries
for the files in partitions that might have changed elsewhere.