Help...I'm a dummy

[threeputt]

Client came in and I plugged his jump drive into my machine. (our e-drive)
Viewed his stuff, pulled the jump without thinking, he's gone, and now I can get the "safely remove hardware" icon off my task bar.

I've tried putting another jump in, and removing it correctly, no luck. Does anyone know how to get it off? It's a problem because, coincidentally or not, I now have no connection with my printer ever since that moment. Print files just cue up and won't go. (desk top printer, not solvent jet)

I'm operating Windows XP Pro. Supposed to be friendly with this kind of operator error. Any ideas?

 

[OADesign]

hate to over simplify but...

save all open docs. and restart...

 

[threeputt]

Yup, tried that yesterday. Any other ideas?

 

[Ken]

When you left- double clik on the safely remove harware icon, it offers some options..have you tried that?
Ken

 

[Replicator]

My safely remove hardware icon is always on my taskbar on all 7 of our computers . . .

Does it show the E drive as having something loaded NOW ? ? ?

 

[OADesign]

ok. try this. this happened(s) to my xp based machine at home. I have a additional 4 port usb 2.0 pci card in this machine and on occasion all the usb port do odd things ( i wont waste you time with the details) but what fixes it is this: turn off the machine. rearrange the usb devices. you know just move device from port 1 to four and a device 2 to port three etc. then power on the machine. the usb hub (or hub driver) should sort of wake up and say, "hey thats printer wasn't there before..." and it should work. this usually happens when some usb device hog a lot of system resources (i.e. itunes looking a a new device, lots of activity on an external drive etc)

hope that helps.

 

[mark in tx]

If a reboot didn't fix, then try unplugging the lead to the mother board, start then shut down, plug it back in, start up again.
Check the hardware configuration tab, see if the software has identified a problem.
If that doesn't work, slight possibility that the drive port went bad, shorted out, static discharge, sunspots, etc...

 

[signage]

Threeputt disconnect all usb devices, go into device manager and remove/uninstall all of your usb devices. restart the computer and they will all be reconfigured and this should solve your problem. You can do a search on Microsoft web site and find info on USB ports/problems.