How do I get Windows to re-attach a USB device without having to plug it in again?
After I use the 'Safely Remove Hardware' notification area widget, how do I get Windows to re-attach a USB device (i.e. a USB drive) without having to unplug and plug it in again?
- Device Manager
- Universal Serial Bus controllers
- USB Mass Storage Device find one with yellow (!)
- Disable device, [Yes] to disable
- Enable device, [No] to restart
- Disable device second time :D [Yes] to disable, [No] to restart
- Enable device
Device reconnected.
Check the RescanDevices (ZIP file) tool at this Drive Tools for Windows page.
When an IDE or SATA drive has been prepared for safe removal it can be brought back by a scan for new hardware. That's what this tool initiates.
It is a non interactive, invisible Windows application. It does the same as Microsoft's tool DEVCON when called with parameter 'rescan'.
There are some other good notes and tools at that page.
It was answered it on Server Fault a while ago! My answer was -
If you use eject instead of safely remove, it unmaps the drive and kills all open handles (and displays the popup saying it is safe to remove), however the device is still present. You can then go to Device Manager and disable followed by enable the flash drive, and it should remap itself.
I can not guarantee, but I assume the same should work for safely remove - however if it does actually remove the device, you should be able to readd it by going to device manager, right clicking on the computer object and click scan for new hardware.
You can also try a utility called DEVCON.