Suddenly can't safely remove external USB drives

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.