Windows 7: Error Ejecting USB Mass Storage Device
Sometimes, when trying to eject (remove) an external USB hard drive, Windows 7 issues the following error:
Problem Ejecting USB Mass Storage Device
Windows can't stop your 'Generic volume' device because a program is still using it. Close any programs that might be using the device, and then try again later.
This question addresses this issue when it happens in Windows XP or Windows Vista. Are there better techniques to use in Windows 7 SP1, preferably something that does not require a closed-source third-party tool?
Things I have tried:
- Closing all applications.
- Letting the system sit for 5 minutes to finish any outstanding NTFS journal writes.
- Disabling Windows indexing.
- Ensuring that there are no shares.
- Temporarily disabling antivirus.
- Using USB Disk Ejector (did not help).
- Putting the system in sleep mode and then waking it up.
- Using SysInternal's Process Explorer to see if any processes are using the drive.
My technique in the past was to turn off the system, but chkdsk often detects errors after doing this.
Here are some steps you can take:
- Completely restart Windows Explorer. To do this, press WIN+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager. Then, locate explorer.exe in Details and kill the process. Click New Task, type 'explorer' and hit Enter. Alternatively on Windows 10, you can also try right-clicking Windows Explorer on the processes tab and clicking Restart
- Try closing the application that was using the USB. Somtimes, if I edit a file in Word on a flash drive and then start doing something else in Word, completely closing Word will free it up for whatever reason.
- If the above does not work, try logging off and then logging back on. This is a last-resort but it most certainly will work. No restart is nessecary. Be careful about restarting with a USB in - if your PC is set to boot from USB, you will get a No OS detected error