I use a ZIP USB Drive for my music collection. When I finish hearing music,
I try to remove the USB and get a message about a program still using it. I
tried closing every program and even disabling my antivirus without success.
It worked fine with Windows XP. Any ideas? TIA.

Have you tried disconnecting the Zip drive and rebooting?

"Aldo" wrote in message
...
I use a ZIP USB Drive for my music collection. When I finish hearing
music, I try to remove the USB and get a message about a program still
using it. I tried closing every program and even disabling my antivirus
without success. It worked fine with Windows XP. Any ideas? TIA.

Try to eject the disk using the eject command from Windows Explorer or from
Computer (right click on the drive letter for the option.) Once the disk is
ejected it should free up the remove the USB lock that you are experiencing.
I have a USB ZIP drive but haven't tried it with Vista yet. I have had to
do this with XP however and it worked most times. Of course you may have
issues with the eject for the drive also if the OS has locked the drive and
I have had issues with this in the past also with XP.

If you are not writing to the drive, only reading your music files you
should have no problem just unplugging the USB drive. The caution for using
the safe remove option is normally used to ensure that all data being
written to a drive has been written prior to removal of the drive.

Thanks for your answer. The problem is I'm working in several other files,
so I don't want to close my session in the first place, much less do I want
to reboot.

"Badger" escribió en el mensaje de
...
Have you tried disconnecting the Zip drive and rebooting?

Thanks for your answer. The eject option gives me the same message about a
program still using it. By the way, of course I checked the task manager and
my music program (MediaMonkey) was completely closed.

"LVTravel" escribió en el mensaje de
...


"Aldo" wrote in message
...
I use a ZIP USB Drive for my music collection. When I finish hearing
music, I try to remove the USB and get a message about a program still
using it. I tried closing every program and even disabling my antivirus
without success. It worked fine with Windows XP. Any ideas? TIA.

Try to eject the disk using the eject command from Windows Explorer or
from Computer (right click on the drive letter for the option.) Once the
disk is ejected it should free up the remove the USB lock that you are
experiencing. I have a USB ZIP drive but haven't tried it with Vista yet.
I have had to do this with XP however and it worked most times. Of course
you may have issues with the eject for the drive also if the OS has locked
the drive and I have had issues with this in the past also with XP.

If you are not writing to the drive, only reading your music files you
should have no problem just unplugging the USB drive. The caution for
using the safe remove option is normally used to ensure that all data
being written to a drive has been written prior to removal of the drive.

"Aldo" wrote in message
...
Thanks for your answer. The eject option gives me the same message about a
program still using it. By the way, of course I checked the task manager
and my music program (MediaMonkey) was completely closed.

"LVTravel" escribió en el mensaje de
...


"Aldo" wrote in message
...
I use a ZIP USB Drive for my music collection. When I finish hearing
music, I try to remove the USB and get a message about a program still
using it. I tried closing every program and even disabling my antivirus
without success. It worked fine with Windows XP. Any ideas? TIA.

Try to eject the disk using the eject command from Windows Explorer or
from Computer (right click on the drive letter for the option.) Once the
disk is ejected it should free up the remove the USB lock that you are
experiencing. I have a USB ZIP drive but haven't tried it with Vista yet.
I have had to do this with XP however and it worked most times. Of
course you may have issues with the eject for the drive also if the OS
has locked the drive and I have had issues with this in the past also
with XP.

If you are not writing to the drive, only reading your music files you
should have no problem just unplugging the USB drive. The caution for
using the safe remove option is normally used to ensure that all data
being written to a drive has been written prior to removal of the drive.


You still have some program locking access to the drive and it is probably
you music program. ( I have just hooked up my USB Zip to Vista to test a
few things and it works good.)

Try rebooting the computer to clear any access to the drive. Immediately
try to eject the disk. If it is not released at that time, you have a
program that is loading at startup that is locking the drive and you will
need to find out that program.

If the first test is successful in removing the disk, try using Windows
Media Player (I know, I don't like it too much either) to play a few of the
songs and see if the drive is locked after playing them. If not, I would
suspect that the player you are using is still keeping something locked in
the system even when closed. You may be able to find it in the Task
Manager, processes and see if you see anything running there related to your
music player.

If I log out of my session, and of course if I reboot Vista, I can eject my
HD without problems. However I don't want to close all my work just to
remove the HD. I would like to know which program locks the HD. I know about
a few programs that give this information in Windows XP (like unlockit,
etc.), but I don't know how to find this in Vista. As I said before, the
task manager doesn't show anything related to my music program.

"LVTravel" escribió en el mensaje de
...


"Aldo" wrote in message
...
Thanks for your answer. The eject option gives me the same message about
a program still using it. By the way, of course I checked the task
manager and my music program (MediaMonkey) was completely closed.

"LVTravel" escribió en el mensaje de
...


"Aldo" wrote in message
...
I use a ZIP USB Drive for my music collection. When I finish hearing
music, I try to remove the USB and get a message about a program still
using it. I tried closing every program and even disabling my antivirus
without success. It worked fine with Windows XP. Any ideas? TIA.

Try to eject the disk using the eject command from Windows Explorer or
from Computer (right click on the drive letter for the option.) Once
the disk is ejected it should free up the remove the USB lock that you
are experiencing. I have a USB ZIP drive but haven't tried it with Vista
yet. I have had to do this with XP however and it worked most times. Of
course you may have issues with the eject for the drive also if the OS
has locked the drive and I have had issues with this in the past also
with XP.

If you are not writing to the drive, only reading your music files you
should have no problem just unplugging the USB drive. The caution for
using the safe remove option is normally used to ensure that all data
being written to a drive has been written prior to removal of the drive.


You still have some program locking access to the drive and it is probably
you music program. ( I have just hooked up my USB Zip to Vista to test a
few things and it works good.)

Try rebooting the computer to clear any access to the drive. Immediately
try to eject the disk. If it is not released at that time, you have a
program that is loading at startup that is locking the drive and you will
need to find out that program.

If the first test is successful in removing the disk, try using Windows
Media Player (I know, I don't like it too much either) to play a few of
the songs and see if the drive is locked after playing them. If not, I
would suspect that the player you are using is still keeping something
locked in the system even when closed. You may be able to find it in the
Task Manager, processes and see if you see anything running there related
to your music player.

Did you boot originally with the Zip drive having a disk in it?
If you did, then the Zip drive is controlling the action of your computer.
The only recourse is to remove the disk and shutdown, then reboot without
the disk in the Zip drive.

"Badger" wrote in message
...
Did you boot originally with the Zip drive having a disk in it?
If you did, then the Zip drive is controlling the action of your computer.
The only recourse is to remove the disk and shutdown, then reboot without
the disk in the Zip drive.

Not always true, but it may be in the OPs case. I have tested the theory
presented by you with my USB Zip 100 drive and with or without a disk in the
drive upon boot-up I can access, eject and insert another disk in the drive
without issues of having the computer locking the drive. In the OP's case I
am wondering if the program creates a "playlist" that causes the drive to
lock and doesn't release it on program closing.

There are some programs that will lock the drive until reboot but I don't
have one on this Vista machine but I do on one of my XP machines. If I even
run the program (and it doesn't access the ZIP drive during it's time
running to get or write data to it) it locks the drive. This is a piece of
vertical software that even locks the CD/DVD drives on the computer.
Apparently one of the program's routines will lock all removable drives on
the machine. Since the program doesn't release the drives during exit, a
reboot is required. Granted a poor piece of program writing but if the
program is necessary for business operations...

Thanks for your answers. No, I insert the drive after I boot Windows. This
is a USB hard drive , not a Zip drive. Thanks for your help, maybe I'll have
to live with this problem, since I need this program.

"LVTravel" escribió en el mensaje de
...


"Badger" wrote in message
...
Did you boot originally with the Zip drive having a disk in it?
If you did, then the Zip drive is controlling the action of your
computer.
The only recourse is to remove the disk and shutdown, then reboot without
the disk in the Zip drive.

Not always true, but it may be in the OPs case. I have tested the theory
presented by you with my USB Zip 100 drive and with or without a disk in
the drive upon boot-up I can access, eject and insert another disk in the
drive without issues of having the computer locking the drive. In the
OP's case I am wondering if the program creates a "playlist" that causes
the drive to lock and doesn't release it on program closing.

There are some programs that will lock the drive until reboot but I don't
have one on this Vista machine but I do on one of my XP machines. If I
even run the program (and it doesn't access the ZIP drive during it's time
running to get or write data to it) it locks the drive. This is a piece
of vertical software that even locks the CD/DVD drives on the computer.
Apparently one of the program's routines will lock all removable drives on
the machine. Since the program doesn't release the drives during exit, a
reboot is required. Granted a poor piece of program writing but if the
program is necessary for business operations...