Remove hardware from "safely remove hardware" list on Windows 7

I have a USB wifi card (D-Link DWA-125) on a Windows 7 x64 computer. The problem is that the card appears on the "safely remove hardware" list, but I don't ever want to unplug it, so I would like to remove it from the list.

So far I have only found solutions that mess with the registry (and don't really work properly) or that substitute the safely remove hardware with a third-party software. Or worse, hide the icon altogether. Yes, I do need the icon from USB drives and phones.

So, is there a "clean" way to remove it from the list?

Thanks.

Solution 1:

The short answer is no. Those settings are normally hard-coded into the driver. The registry hack will probably work until you reboot.

Solution 2:

Possible solution here

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/30495127/remove-hardware-from-safely-remove-hardware-list.aspx

This can be achieved by modifying a registry value. So far I had no time writing a little tool for this...

Devices are shown there if they are marked as removable and if they do no have the 'surprise removal ok' flag. These are bit coded flags:

From cfgmgr32.h:

The device capabilities are found in the registry in a value named 'Capabilities' under (sample for one of my USB flash drives): HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB\Vid_058f&Pid_6331\058F091111B

If you take away 4 from the value or add 80h and then refresh the save removal dialog by toggeling the checkbox, then the drive is gone. But the value is reset when you attach the drive for the next time. This is hard coded into the driver and read each time the drive is loaded. If you export the modified value an reg file then you can silently load it on startup by regedit /s hidecardreader.reg

The device id string of your card reader (this Vid_058f&Pid_6331\058F091111B thing) is found in the properties of the USB device in the device manager. My ListUsbDrives tool shows it too (the 'Ctrl DevID'): http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/listusbdrives.zip