[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Work Around 'Generic Volume Cannot Be Stopped' Errors here

[GetReal]

This is a very irritating situation! I see it almost every day while working as I need to move files, photos or documents to whatever workstation I am using at the moment.
Sorry, I don't have a solution either. But note my experience with two separate USB thumb drives - just "yanking" will usually not result in an accessable file if the most recent activity was to move-copy something TO the drive.

[Juliet]

Thanks for looking into my question. Yes, I meant to say this happens when I try to 'safely remove hardware'. It has happened for a while with different external harddrives. It happens even when all windows are closed. I'm surprised Windows has not taken care of this because it seems to be a common problem. Thanks!

[alan1205]

Windows XP is definately better at handling removable drives than earlier versions of Windows, but it depends on what you have running on the computer. I don't usually experience these problems, but have seen it before. The prime hazard with USB drives is losing them when you don't have a backup. Use them what they're meant to be for - copying data from one computer to another. I've seen too many people who keep their entire life on a USB stick on a keyring, although I've never been one of them. Keeping backups on other computers also solves possible file corruption from yanking the drive while the activity light is on. If you can't read it, copy it from the other computer again.

[number6]

When all the steps in this article have been followed and the device still can not be stopped, use Task Manager to end the explorer.exe process. That does it most of the time for me.

[jowolf359]

The work-around I use is simple:

First I go to My Computer and select the drive in question, say Drive G, then I click Eject. Once i do that I try and remove it through Safely Remove Drive.
If that fails I open Task Manager and look for it there, and End Task. If that fails I Log Out, not Shut Down. Then I reopen the account and click safely Remove Drive. Normally I never have to completely shut down the computer by doing this. In the case of SanDisk drives it will have two drives in use in My computer, you have to eject both drives before you can remove the Flash Drive. I hope this helps!

[mungerj]

This happens when you keep a program running that accessed a file on the thumb drive even after closing that particular file or saving it to the hard drive. For example, if you open a powerpoint file from the thumb drive and then close the file but leave powerpoint running (with another presentation open perhaps), Windows will think it's still not safe to remove the thumb drive. This results from a Windows feature called "write-behind caching" that's a thowback to the days of older (slower) hardware and the burgeoning desire to multitask. The feature allows you to move on to the next task and lets Windows save your file or otherwise access the drive in the background later. With hardware as fast as it is today, this feature is not really necessary - you can disable it: right-click the drive in My Computer and select properties, click the hardware tab at the top; select the thumb drive from the list of drives, then click properties at the bottom; select the policies tab at the top, then click the "optimize for quick removal" option. You will no longer have to use the safely remove hardware process for that thumb drive.

[mungerj]

Another less-common cause of this problem is when the program you used to access a file on the thumb drive remains running in memory even though you closed it. If you use ctrl-alt-delete to go to the task manager and then click the processes tab, you may find the program still runnning even though you no longer have a window open. For example, if you opened a powerpoint presentation from your thumb drive and then closed it, you may still find powerpnt.exe in the list of processes running. Select the program and manually end the process. You should then find that you can safely remove the thumb drive using the icon from the tray. I use powerpoint as my example because that program has caused me this problem with thumb drives quite frequently at work.

[flower09]

thank you! The log off option worked for me.

[YasserAyad]

I had programs like daemon tools and other stuff open down there to the right. Close everything and then press safely remove the usb. It worked for me.