If you are someone who uses removable USB thumb drives or hard drives I hope you have gotten into the habit of using the Safely Removing Hardware wizard. The wizard should be initiated anytime you are removing a portable device from the system – it’s the only way to ensure Windows isn’t still accessing or using the device in question. Removing a device prematurely can lead to all sorts of data problems, including out right corruption and lost files! The wizard can be initiated through the Desktop notification tray by clicking familiar USB-looking icon. Unfortunately, in an effort to stream line the interface, Windows can often hide icons that aren’t used often – at which point the icon is effectively out of sight, out of mind. If you need an extra jolt to your memory you might try adding the Safely Remove Hardware option to the Windows Desktop context menu.

Open the Windows Registry through the Start search menu with regedit.

Traverse the tree to the key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\

Right-click on Shell and create a New->Key titled Safely Remove Hardware

Now within the Safely Remove Hardware key create a New->String Value called Icon via a right-click.

Double-click on Icon and set it’s Value data to hotplug.dll,-100

Right-click on the Safely Remove Hardware key and create a New->Key titled Command

The new key will have a Default value which you should set to C:\\Windows\\System32\\control.exe hotplug.dll with a double-click.

Returning to your Windows Desktop you should now notice a new option in the context menu – Safely Remove Hardware. Selecting this entry will then initiate the Safely Remove Hardware Wizard.