Hide the Safely Remove Hardware Icon from System Tray

Contributor Icon Contributed by mikejc Date Icon August 24, 2004  
Tag Icon Tagged: Windows

Recipe that explains how to hide an unwanted icon from the system tray.


If you have an USB device attached to your system, you will notice an icon in the Notification area, which - when clicked - will give you the option to Stop your hardware, before you unplug it.
It is possible that you never unplug this hardware. So how do you get rid of the icon?

As far as I know the only way is to right-click the notification area, and selecting Properties. Under the Notification area heading, click Customize. Find the Safely Remove Hardware icon and select Always hide in the Behavior column next to it (press OK and Apply to back out).

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Viewing 14 Comments

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    I managed to get as far as the selecting of the safely remove icon property but no such HIDE option exists?
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    <ul id="quote"><h6>brokklu wrote:</h6>I managed to get as far as the selecting of the safely remove icon property but no such HIDE option exists?</ul>

    Try this:

    <ul>1. Right click in the system tray
    2. Select Customize Notifications
    3. Click Safely Remove Hardware
    4. In its drop down box select Always Hide
    5. Click OK</ul>
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    • v
    There is another way to hide this icon.
    Download this utility:
    http://www.safelyremove.com/safelyremovesetup.exe
    or
    http://www.safelyremove.com/safelyremovesetup.zip

    After setup - open utility menu: Options - System - check "Disable Windows USB Hotplug manager" checkbox.

    BTW - with this utility you can do safely remove hardware by using system-wide hotkeys(combination of keys). Very handy utility :)

    Hope this will help.
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    <ul id="quote"><h6>MickeyMouse wrote:</h6></ul><ul id="quote"><h6>brokklu wrote:</h6>I managed to get as far as the selecting of the safely remove icon property but no such HIDE option exists?</ul>

    Try this:

    <ul>1. Right click in the system tray
    2. Select Customize Notifications
    3. Click Safely Remove Hardware
    4. In its drop down box select Always Hide
    5. Click OK</ul>
    The only problem with using that "customize option is that it affects ALL of the icons and then you have that little "other thing" (lol) that you have to click to slide and it shows the other icons. There is no way to hide just that one "safely remove hardware" icon.
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    <ul id="quote"><h6>Anonymous wrote:</h6>
    The only problem with using that "customize option is that it affects ALL of the icons and then you have that little "other thing" (lol) that you have to click to slide and it shows the other icons. There is no way to hide just that one "safely remove hardware" icon.</ul>

    Actually, it doesn't affect all of the icons. It only affects the icon that you selected as "Always hide". If you want to keep all the other icons in the system tray then select "Always show" from the customize option and then you dont need to click on the chevron (I believe that's what the little "other thing" is called).

    Hope this helps :D
    Risherz
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    Yes, it does effect all icons because now you have to deal with the stupid arrow that pops up so you can UNhide hidden icons. This little baby interferes with a couple of systray icon only applications, so I can't use it.

    Also, there's got to be a way to remove this by simply editing the registry or something. There's no way I'm installing SHAREWARE to get rid of this.
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    I cannot find the safely remove hardware icon now that I need it to remove a thumbdrive. It's listed as being in the customize notification box "Past Items". It's set for always show but it's nowhere to be found. Any ideas? Thanks Rosanna
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    <ul id="quote"><h6>Essobie wrote:</h6>Yes, it does effect all icons because now you have to deal with the stupid arrow that pops up so you can UNhide hidden icons. This little baby interferes with a couple of systray icon only applications, so I can't use it.

    Also, there's got to be a way to remove this by simply editing the registry or something. There's no way I'm installing SHAREWARE to get rid of this.</ul>

    Okay, let me clear this up... Yes, the little arrow will come up because the hardware icon is hidden but to not make it interfear with the systray icon applications that you have you can do this (okay this will still show the arrow thing but it wont hide the systray icons that you need.

    1. Identify which icons you want to see always
    2. Right click in the systray area
    3. Click on Customize notifications
    4. Browse until you see the icon
    5. Under Behaviour select Always Show
    6. Repeat the same thing for the other systray icons that you always want to display
    7. Click OK

    Now this will keep the icons in your systray no matter what. And I don't think there is a registry hack to remove this icon from your systray...

    Hope this helps :D
    Risherz
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    There must be a registry hack or something. it's to just get rid of the icon so it must be there somewhere.
    I'm programing a windows environment in javascript/html so i wanted to have a printscreen of the taskbar without icons..

    http://www.freetrafficsite.com/win - the one i'm working on that i couldn't finish now that this icon thing stuffed me up.
    http://www.freetrafficsite.com/win2 - has the working taskbar.

    apart from that i just don't like taskbar icons or any other background processes running at all unless i'm actually using at the present time, because they use up ram/cpu resources.

    they way i finally found how i could do it just so i can get a printscreen of what the taskbar looks like without icons is.. Ctrl,Alt,Del, end process explorer.exe!
    windows loads itself back up but ditches previous taskbar icons from the ram.

    note this way wont save cpu resources.. but if you just hate little icons like that and don't want to use shareware programs that constantly run to hide it then this is the best way.

    cheers.

    ----------------------------------------------------
    Chris Malone - Admin
    FreeTrafficSite.com / IMarketTraffic Inc.
    www.FreeTrafficSite.com
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    Little different angle on this question, but has anyone had a problem with this icon showing up in their system tray after they installed a SATA drive, my boot drive no less :? but its there and I don't know if its some software I didn't get to install (got it as an OEM drive from newegg) I kinda like it being there when my jump drive is plugged in, but my boot drive is always gonna be there. :roll:

    GigaByte K8NS Pro - Socket 754
    HDD is a Western Digital Raptor 74gig on the SATA 1 plug of the MoBo, has two SATA busses, one RAID (SATA 0/01 SII), one I plugged in on is non RAID (SATA 0/1) All drivers loaded and recognized by XP PRO SP2 as far as I know (no yellow ? or ! in the Device Manager)

    Sorry this was such a long post, but I wanted to be thorough.

    T.I.A.
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    <ul id="quote">Little different angle on this question, but has anyone had a problem with this icon showing up in their system tray after they installed a SATA drive, my boot drive no less but its there and I don't know if its some software I didn't get to install (got it as an OEM drive from newegg) I kinda like it being there when my jump drive is plugged in, but my boot drive is always gonna be there. </ul>

    I have the same strange behavior. I have a SATA drive set up, no usb devices have ever been plugged in, and I get the 'Safely remove hardware' icon appearing allowing me to remove my primary hard drive. Not quite right, how to I fix that?
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    I have the same thing happining, which it should happen because satas are plug n play, but I have no clue on how to get that icon off just for the sata drive and not effecting anything else. The only thing I could find is a program that supposedly allows you to do what your talking about but no manual methods like editing a file or registry key.

    http://www.safelyremove.com/
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    Is there away to run a file and eject all removeable drives on the computer? I hate having to remove my ipod etc one after the other.
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    This allows you to remove and do some other useful things in a batch file or script. I'm sure their are other more useful tools with a GUI.
 
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