Error ejecting external hard drives/SSDs

Windows 11 25H2. Pretty much everything up-to-date, including graphics drivers, GPU drivers, MS store components etc.

A week ago, out of nowhere, without installing anything or tweaking any settings, I stopped being able to safely eject external hard drives/SSDs, except for flash drives. When I click the ''eject'' button, 45 times out of 50 so to speak, I get this error.

I've since performed several clean installs using the Media Creation Tool, formatting and deleting every partition and the problem persists, even after the November cumulative update. 

I've reached out to AI to troubleshoot and after long, tiresome sessions, supposedly, the problem lies with the update(s) Windows sneakily delivered that messed up the connection between some system components.

I'm not really asking for a workaround per se, I'm just intrigued why this is happening and hasn't been addressed.

Kind regards,