Sometimes when I'm trying to safely remove an USB stick formatted with NTFS from any Windows 7 installation, Windows 7 refuses to release the USB device.
This occurs on host machines as well as on VM guest machines. When I'm attaching the USB stick to a virtual machine (VMware Workstation) and when this effect occurs in there I can see from Workstation's device manager that the USB stick is getting accessed once every (approx.) five seconds. The USB stick shortly flashes up accordingly then, so there is indeed some access to the USB stick.
Now, this doesn't happen all the time. This effect only occurs, say once or twice a week.
Waiting for 5 to 10 Minutes, the low-frequent regular short flashing finally stops and I can safely remove my USB stick then.
Well, what I want to know: Which Windows service is sometimes accessing my USB stick in this manner?
This happens on several machines, some of them having almost no software installed.
When exploring the file handles with SysInternals Process Explorer, there's only a Windows Explorer handle attached to the USB device.
I suspect it might either be Windows Defender (having Search Removable Devices enabled), Windows Search or Windows Defragment. But this is only a guess.
Can anyone please enlighten me on which service is capturing my USB device for such a long time, keeping me from safely removing the USB device?
This occurs on host machines as well as on VM guest machines. When I'm attaching the USB stick to a virtual machine (VMware Workstation) and when this effect occurs in there I can see from Workstation's device manager that the USB stick is getting accessed once every (approx.) five seconds. The USB stick shortly flashes up accordingly then, so there is indeed some access to the USB stick.
Now, this doesn't happen all the time. This effect only occurs, say once or twice a week.
Waiting for 5 to 10 Minutes, the low-frequent regular short flashing finally stops and I can safely remove my USB stick then.
Well, what I want to know: Which Windows service is sometimes accessing my USB stick in this manner?
This happens on several machines, some of them having almost no software installed.
When exploring the file handles with SysInternals Process Explorer, there's only a Windows Explorer handle attached to the USB device.
I suspect it might either be Windows Defender (having Search Removable Devices enabled), Windows Search or Windows Defragment. But this is only a guess.
Can anyone please enlighten me on which service is capturing my USB device for such a long time, keeping me from safely removing the USB device?
Microsoft Marketing should care for customer feedback on their consumer products, e.g.Windows& Office.
Have had Windows 8 … went back to Windows 7.