Missing Safe Removal Tool

When using a thumb drive or other USB drive you should always use the Safe Removal Tool before removing the drive, to ensure the integrity of your data files.

Sometimes you cannot see the tool, because it hides, but you can change that behavior for any of the icons in the notification area of the Taskbar by right-clicking near the date and selecting ‘Customize Notifications’ ...

... finding the Safely Remove Hardware entry and making sure it is set to ‘Always Show’.

But we had one Windows XP machine that frequently simply did not show the tool at all. We tried Googling for a solution and found that many people had experienced the same problem, and came across one solution for accessing the tool. That involves right-clicking on the desktop, selecting New and then Shortcut ...

... which brings up a wizard, and in the box for ‘location of the item’ type:

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll SW_SHOW

... then click Next, enter the name you want for the shortcut and then Finish

Then double-clicking on the shortcut brings up a window where you can select the applicable drive and click the Stop button.