I have a simpletech external hard drive, windows 98se, connected to a usb port.
The "safely remove hardware" taskbar icon is not showing up any longer. I am afraid to switch of the hard drive.

Was this working before?

Does the ext drive show up in windows explorer and you are still able to use it?

Any changes that either happened or that you perhaps made to your computer around the time that the problem started; particularly any software or hardware that you installed or setup.

Yes, the "safe to remove" icon did show up before and I am able to use the drive.

Unchecked some items in the "msconfig" start up. Could that stop the icon from from showing up in the taskbar?

I also had this problem once before. On another blog I came a crossed others with the same issue. No one seems to know why sometimes "safe to remove" doesn't open. But I have taken there advice and placed a "safe to remove" short cut right on my desktop. This way I can open it and close\remove things easily before restarting my cpu.

This post is almost 2 years old. They're gone by now. Direct any new questions/concerns to relevant threads or a new thread!