removable drive icon keeps appearing and disappearing in taskbar

I've had my Inspiron 1525 with Vista Home Basic SP1 for less than a week, and have sorted out several quirks successfully but this one is driving me nutso!

During general use the removable drive icon intermittently appears and disappears from the taskbar, seemingly at random in the taskbar. It performs as expected when a removable drive (eg USB stick or digital camera) is plugged in.

The random appearances and disappearances are accompanied by the usual noise which is @#$@#$ irritating. Of course I could turn the noise off, but wondering if there is a neater fix?

If I try to click on the icon when it appears randomly it disappears as soon as I mouse-over it. If I have Windows Explorer open there are no new drives appearing or disappearing in the list.



Steph

 

Right click on the Task Bar and select properties. Then go to the Notification Area tab and deselect the Hide inactive icons. This will reduce the number of icons that come and go.

However, the Removable Device icon should only display when there is a removable device present.

Control Panel > Sounds > Sounds to turn off the annoying noises.

John

 

Yes, thanks. There is no removable device being plugged in so the icon should not be appearing at all!!

Any other ideas??

 

Try to remove the plastic dell SD card on the media reader slot and place it back securely. The removable device icon appears and disappears when this action is done, even with the plastic SD card. I don't know why since it is not a real card, but if that plastic SD card is loose, the icon appears and disappears intermittently. This is the only issue I know of the 1525 regarding the removable device icon so if this doesn't help, I suggest you start calling dell 'coz your media card slot might be defective. Or you could remove the plastic SD card totally and observe to make sure if the slot is the one causing the problem because the spring in your media card slot might be loose.