Forum Discussion
After clicking Safely Remove Hardware, the name of the external device appears as garbled characters
After connecting multiple external devices, when you click the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon in the lower-right corner of the taskbar, some device names in the pop-up list appear as garbled characters, making it impossible to identify which specific device is being referred to and increasing the risk of accidentally disconnecting the wrong device.
3 Replies
Right-click the device and select "Uninstall device". This will safely remove the device after ensuring all data writes are completed—similar to using "Safely Remove Hardware."
Uninstall all USB controllers in Device Manager, then restart the computer to allow the system to automatically reinstall the drivers and fix the garbled characters.
If the FriendlyName value doesn't exist, you can create it: right-click in the right pane, select New > String Value, name it FriendlyName, and then set its value to your desired name.
