Member Avatar for Akuma Gekido

ok, i recently formatted my hard drive and reistalled windowsXP. but now i have the "safely remove hardware" icon in the system tray, and when i click on it, it gives me the option to remove C drive, which obviously cant be done. and i just cant seem to get rid of the icon. any ideas what the prob is?

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Windows shows a fixed internal drive in the "Safely Remove Hardware" list when the storage controller or port reports the connection as hot‑pluggable. That happens with AHCI-mode SATA controllers, eSATA ports, some vendor drivers, or when a port is configured for hot‑swap. , adding a second drive can make an entry appear; is on the right track — swapping drives or using hot‑plug capable ports will trigger this behavior.

Practical fixes to try: 1) Check the motherboard BIOS/UEFI and disable "Hot Plug" or "Hot Swap" for the internal SATA ports if available — that will stop Windows from treating those ports as removable. 2) Update the chipset/SATA (AHCI) driver from the motherboard or chipset vendor; a correct driver usually reports ports as non‑removable. 3) If neither BIOS nor driver options exist, switching SATA mode to IDE/Compatibility can remove the removable flag, but do this only after backing up: changing SATA mode after Windows was installed often requires reinstalling Windows or enabling the proper driver first. 4) If the drive is connected via eSATA or a USB-to-SATA adapter, its presence in the list is expected.

Short term you can hide the tray icon via taskbar settings, but do not attempt to eject the boot/system disk. Before making BIOS or driver changes, verify which controller and ports are in use by checking Device Manager under "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" and "Disk drives," and back up important data.

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Member Avatar for Member #46692

This tends to happen when you actually replace the hard drive with another one. Have you done this or taken it out and put it back in?

Member Avatar for Akuma Gekido

No i havn't, but id hav put in a second hard drive, which now also appears on the 'safely remove hardware' list when i click the icon

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