14 Jun 2010

Creating your own shortcut to eject USB devices

I sometime find that my “Safely Remove Hardware” that I often use to eject my USB connected devices (iPod, USB Stick, External Hard Disk, etc) often disappears (don’t ask!). This is a post to share how I worked around this quirky Windows behaviour.

Create a shortcut, say on your desktop, with the following command:

%windir%\system32\RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

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And give it a name that makes sense to you and click “Finish”.2

Double-click it when you need to eject a USB device. It’s that simple.

Command-line lovers using Launchy will find this shortcut particularly handy. Place it in a folder that Launchy is watching (E.g you Start menu or the Desktop) and use away!

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It has since become my favourite way of doing this :)