Forum Discussion
cannot eject external drive
Yes, I know that I can shut down and disconnect, but I don't have enough ports so am unplugging a lot and need to make this work
The warning is telling me that a process is locking the drive, but it isn't telling me what that process is. In Task Manager, I've closed all my apps except Malwarebytes tray app. Might that be the problem?
I've also used procexp and it shows 2 instances of explorer.exe. Why would those be running when they aren't appearing in the Task Mgr? Might they be indexing?
If possible, try run scan on it and if it is safe, temporary close Malwarebytes and see if you are able to eject it?
Ended Malwarebytes tray task...still didn't work
Went to indexing in the Control Panel
The external drive was not selected.
I'll add that this is a relatively new laptop. When I first started using it, this was not a problem. It appeared more recently. But I can't associate it with anything I did because I didn't attempt to eject for several months
- Try boot into Safe Mode and see if you are able to eject it?
You may try download Process Explorer and run it as Administrator :
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer
Then under Find->Find Handle or DLL, search the letter associate with your drive which you have problem with for example it might be D:\
And see what process (processes) are associated with that?I have run process explorer and it returns 2 explorer.exe processes
If I stop them, I lose my taskbar and my desktop, which is NOT what I'm looking for
I will try safe mode - but that would take longer than shutdown/unplug/reboot. I can disconnect my drive..what I'm trying to do is to figure out what's wrong with SAFELY REMOVE...
