New Icon in Task Tray

When you have a removable USB device installed, Windows displays a small icon in the system tray of your task bar: If you hover your mouse over it you'll see it's tool-tip: "Safely Remove Hardware".

The purpose of "Safely Remove Hardware" is how you tell Windows that you're about to remove a device so that Windows can finish whatever it needs to do with it. In the case of disks, for example, Windows flushes all disk buffers, avoiding things like potential corruption.Sometimes, if you remove something like a USB thumb drive or external hard drive without first telling Windows, it's possible to corrupt the contents of the drive. In practice that doesn't happen often, but it's possible.

Occasionally, for reasons unknown, the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon can disappear. Even though there are devices or a device installed that require it - it's nowhere to be found. When this happens, you can click on Start, Run..., and type in:

RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

And press OK. That will bring up the "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog Box. From this dialog you can click on the device you want to remove, and press Stop. Once Windows is done with it, you can then remove the device.

A side effect of doing this is that the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon will reappear. On my system, I've never seen it disappear.