Windows refuse to eject volume for no obvious reason
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
I believe everyone who uses Windows on a daily basis faces that problem quite often.
The case is: you are done with your removable hard drive or flash memory and then you are trying to Safely Remove it. However, Windows may tell you that "The device cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later." even though you are absolutely sure that you have closed all programs that may be using the removable volume.
Most of the times, this is caused by the Windows Explorer, or explorer.exe (not to be confused with the browser Internet Explorer). You have to kill the Explorer's running process and the start a new instance.
Open the task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Escape). Make sure you select the Processes tab. Sort the processs by name (by clicking on the Image Name header) and then look for a process with the name explorer.exe:
Once you find it, click End Process. You may notice that your windows list and all the icons on the bottom of your screen will disappear, as well as the icons on your desktop, but don't worry they will soon come back as they were.
Then, select the Applications tab. There you have to click on the New Task... button:
The Create New Task dialog will show up:
Type "explorer" in the text box and press Enter. Your windows list and icons should show up again. Now, try again to stop the device. Hopefully there will be no process blocking you any more.
The case is: you are done with your removable hard drive or flash memory and then you are trying to Safely Remove it. However, Windows may tell you that "The device cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later." even though you are absolutely sure that you have closed all programs that may be using the removable volume.
Most of the times, this is caused by the Windows Explorer, or explorer.exe (not to be confused with the browser Internet Explorer). You have to kill the Explorer's running process and the start a new instance.
Open the task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Escape). Make sure you select the Processes tab. Sort the processs by name (by clicking on the Image Name header) and then look for a process with the name explorer.exe:
Once you find it, click End Process. You may notice that your windows list and all the icons on the bottom of your screen will disappear, as well as the icons on your desktop, but don't worry they will soon come back as they were.
Then, select the Applications tab. There you have to click on the New Task... button:
The Create New Task dialog will show up:
Type "explorer" in the text box and press Enter. Your windows list and icons should show up again. Now, try again to stop the device. Hopefully there will be no process blocking you any more.
