The “Safely Remove Hardware” icon was included with Windows XP and Vista to provide a “safe” way to disconnect removable devices. According to Microsoft, you are supposed to use this icon, instead of just unplugging your removable devices (such as USB flash drives, eSATA drives, etc.). Realistically, as long as the device isn’t being written too, you can usually just yank it out.
The “Safely Remove Hardware” icon seems to annoy people who either know not to unplug a device while it is in use, or have “removable” devices that stay permanently attached to their computer. Using the program below, you can effectively remove the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon from your system tray.
- Download this file to a convenient location (such as your desktop).
- Go to your download location, and double-click on “HideSRHi.exe”.
- The “Safely Remove Hardware” icon should disappear from your system tray shortly after performing step 2.
- Delete the “HideSRHi.exe” from your download location.
If you ever want the icon back, you can remove the “hidesrhi.exe” entry from your start-up group. I would recommend using a program such as this: https://blog.ryantadams.com/2007/12/10/startup-control-panel/
Thanks to Len Norris for his help with this problem.
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Mark Jepson // Dec 9, 2008 at 6:48 PM
WOW! Thanks
good karma to follow you always!
2 Jeannie // Jan 27, 2009 at 5:06 PM
was so excited to find this, installed, after next reboot, got taskbar not found.
??
XP Pro machine, much thanks!
3 Ryan Adams // Jan 27, 2009 at 6:20 PM
@Jeannie: I too have had that happen. It occurs when the program attempts to remove the icon before Windows has finished loading the taskbar. In my case, it only happens once every 50 boots or so.
You could disable the startup item for hidesrhi.exe and instead use Windows task scheduler to run the program 15 seconds after you login.
4 essbebe // Mar 6, 2009 at 7:03 AM
Access to the data has been denied!
Warning: A virus or unwanted program has been found in the HTTP Data.
Requested URL: https://blog.ryantadams.com/wp-content/uploads/hidesrhi.exe
Information: Is the TR/Agent.56197.A Trojan
Generated by AntiVir WebGuard 8.0.15.0, AVE 8.2.0.100, VDF 7.1.2.127
5 Ryan Adams // Mar 6, 2009 at 9:09 AM
@essbebe: I have checked the file myself with several AV programs and it is not infected. I believe you are getting a false positive because the nature of the program is to alter the system in such a way as to hide a system icon.
You don’t have to take my word for it though, here is the source code of the file:
************************************************************
.386
.model flat, stdcall
option casemap :none
include ..includewindows.inc
include ..includeuser32.inc
include ..includekernel32.inc
include ..includeshell32.inc
includelib ..libkernel32.lib
includelib ..libuser32.lib
includelib ..libshell32.lib
main PROTO
.data
sClass db “SystemTray_Main”,0
.code
start:
invoke main
main proc
LOCAL data :NOTIFYICONDATA
invoke FindWindow, ADDR sClass, NULL
cmp eax, 0
je notfound
push eax
invoke RtlZeroMemory, ADDR data, sizeof NOTIFYICONDATA
mov data.cbSize, sizeof NOTIFYICONDATA
pop eax
mov data.hwnd, eax
mov data.uID, 1226
invoke Shell_NotifyIcon, NIM_DELETE, ADDR data
ret
notfound:
invoke ExitProcess, 0
ret
main endp
end start
*********************************************************
6 Jeannie // Mar 6, 2009 at 4:37 PM
yup I agree, is NOT infected.
run over to
jotti.org and test it yourself essbebe :)