? Best way to disable "Safely Remove" icon?

I have a new T500 running Vista64. I've been able to customize it mostly to my liking. But I still have a notification area icon called "Safely Remove Hardware." When I click on it a window pops up allowing me to "safely remove" the Matshita DVD drive. I will never remove this hardware.

There are pretty clear methods that disable this icon and seemingly work perfectly for nVidia installations of serial ATA hard drives, but this T500/Vista64 setup doesn't have those drives or the registry key that they modified. I am aware that I can customize the notification area to "hide inactive icons" (via Taskbar properties) but there is only this one icon and it does not serve a purpose. I am certain that there is a benign way to remove the icon that does not involve other software (like SafelyRemove or HideSRHi) and only removes the icon as it pertains to the "removable" Matshita DVD drive. Any temporary hardware, like a flash drive, that needs this probably will still display the icon. The nVidia setups simply add a registry fix to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvata by adding a DWord "DisableRemovable." I've read from quite a few successful users of this registry fix on their setup and there doesn't seem to be a downside.

Does someone that knows a lot more about these drivers know if the DisableRemovable (or SurpriseRemovalOK) DWord can be added to a different key that's in my setup so the icon isn't displayed? I'm guessing there are thousands of T500 users that would thank you!

Many Thanks, Ben

 

You can do it by customizing the hide inactive icons option. If you check 'Hide inactive icons' then click customize you can set it to Hide instead of hide when inactive.

 

I am aware that I can customize the notification area to "hide inactive icons" (via Taskbar properties) but there is only this one icon and it does not serve a purpose.

 

You can choose which icon you would like to hide, specifically the 'safely remove' icon.

 

Atbnet is correct - once you enable "hide inactive icons" with the tick-box, the "customize" button becomes active, and in that dialogue you can specify for each icon whether it should always be displayed, hidden when inactive, or always hidden.

Very nice, atbnet!

 

Guys:

Please excuse my bad English. This is what I meant to say:
1) I know how to "hide" notification area icons.
2) I only have one icon in that area, the "safely remove" icon. Not more than one, just one. No other icons are in the notification area. It is already "hidden" but it's still there. True, I have it "hidden," but it is still there.
3) It is not useful in any way. It is not there by design. It is a flaw somewhere, I just can't figure out where. Some computers can fix this with a simple registry modification. I'm looking for a similar fix so it won't display.
Thanks for your participation. I haven't given up yet! Ben

 

With all due respect, if it's not visible, and it's not a symptom of a larger, systemic bug, then this is merely an academic discussion amounting to "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin."

There are, in fact, a number of little "issues" with the tasktray, including disappearing icons (which is much more annoying than an icon that is merely theoretically there). Unless you're prepared to dig hard and deep into the code itself, you'd be best advised to leave it alone.

 

It's probably your optical drive...

Some notebooks (maybe most) count that as a removable device and it shows that icon. Unfortunately, I believe that only way around it is to hide it indefinitely, active or inactive. Either way, the procedure is still the same 'customize' button.

 

Well, did a little googling (always remember, google is your friend, first, last, and always), and, based on this eggheadcafe thread, it looks like, at least in XP, there is a "Capabilities" key in the registry for attached devices that tells the OS whether or not the device in question is, or is not, removeable.

That suggests that you should be checking under the registry keys for your CD/DVD drive to see if you can find said "Capabilities" key, and if you do, try (after backing up the registry, of course) to change that value so that the OS sees it as a non-removeable device.

Another suggestion raised by that thread is going into the properties dialogue for the CD/DVD drive and checking to see whether or not the tick-box for optimizing the device for quick removal has been ticked. If those settings exist for the CD/DVD drive, try to change them to see if the OS will then see the drive as something that does not need to be included in the remove-safely list of PnP devices.

However, this may be an unavoidable behaviour of the WinOS, because, as described in this CNET thread, if the CD/DVD drive is a SATA-based drive, the OS may be "seeing" it as a removeable device because some SATA devices are hot-swappable, in which case it would be reasonable for the OS to see the device as a potentially removeable device that needs to be safely disconnected. To check this out, verify whether or not your CD/DVD drive is a SATA drive, and see if you can determine whether or not the manufacturer used a hot-swappable connection.