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I wouldn’t know, which is why I asked the question.

One thing I haven’t seen anyone address: is there any chance that when the “Quick Removal” setting has been enabled, the “The device is currently in use” message is essentially a “false positive.” That is, can the message beignored because the “Quick Removal” setting ensures that it’s safe to unplug the the drive?

That seems to be what my machine requires too. The only difference is that, instead of rebooting, I put the PC into hibernation, since I can get things running again more quickly that way than by shutting down everything.

I did try “sleep” instead of “hibernate”, but that left a light on on the external drive, which made me cautious about unplugging. So I’ve stuck with hibernate when I’m confronted with a “The device is currently in use” message that won’t go away.

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WSEvelynMitchell

I normally don’t have File Explorer open. When I have the issue I’ve described, I get the “The device is currently in use” message even if absolutely nothing (excluding background processes) is open.

After I saw your response, I plugged in an external drive, opened File Explorer and right clicked on the drive. The pop-up didn’t include an option for “eject.” I’m familiar with that process from my Win 7 machine, but it apparently isn’t here on my Win 10 unit.

But in any case, isn’t the entire point of the “Quick Removal” setting in the Device Manager that an external drive can be removed quickly, without having to click on anything — whether in the system tray, File Explorer or elsewhere? If not, then what’s the point of the “Quick Removal” option?

Thanks.

Thanks for the reply, but I don’t entirely follow you.

On my Win 10 machines, I click the pen drive-looking icon in the system tray. That produces a little pop-up, where I can click on “Eject < whatever that particular drive is called >”. If it ejects OK, then the icon simply disappears and I can unplug the drive; if it doesn’t eject, then I get the message that “The drive is currently in use.”

From your response my understanding is that in Win 8, you do have to click on an icon, but then you have to do something in addition in a place called “printers and devices.” Of the things I’m familiar with, the latter phrasing is most nearly similar to “devices and printers”, which is located in the Control Panel. Which to me suggests that in order to eject a drive in Win 8, what you’re doing is, first, clicking on a system tray icon as I do, then second, having to do something in the Control Panel.

But since the tenor of your response is that it’s a simple process, I’m guessing that I’m actually missing the point, and that you don’t go through such step. I’m not saying this to be pedantic, but only to explain why I’m confused. So could you please explain further?

Also, my original question was basically this: having gone into the Device Manager and set up my external drive for “quick removal,” why can’t I (or can I) simply, and always, just unplug a drive without clicking on anything? Restated, why isn’t “quick removal” in fact “quick removal”? Or is it, so I can simply ignore the icon in the system tray?

Thanks again.

Thanks for the reply, but I’m guessing (more than a guess, actually) that it’s far beyond my rudimentary understanding of computers. I’m capable of following, by rote, simple instructions on how to edit the registry (and in such cases I can usually form some concept of why a particular edit works; if I can’t, I often don’t proceed), but once any degree of actual depth of understanding is required, I quickly get lost.

To illustrate, I’ll not-so-briefly describe how far I got it trying to understand that web page. As far as I can tell (or misunderstand), it deals exclusively with how to modify the registry in order to open multiple JPG files in Chrome, and not multiple XPS files in the XPS Viewer. So I assume that you’re proposing that there’s an analogous way to proceed with XPS files (to be viewed in the XPS Viewer, or in Chrome?; I’m not sure).

I don’t have Chrome. I could easily install it, but since XPS files don’t open in Firefox or Edge, I suspect that Chrome isn’t really the solution being suggested for me. Instead, is the idea that I make only an analogous edit to the registry, replacing the Chrome string with a string for the XPS Viewer?

Assuming that’s the case, consider the screen capture I’ve labeled no. “1.” It seems to be the substance of the suggested solution. It has a line that reads like so:
@=”\ “C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe\” \”%1\””

Am I supposed to insert something in place of that, so that it directs whatever mysterious thing goes on to the XPS Viewer instead of to Chrome? Proceeding with that interpretation, I used Windows Search to locate the XPS Viewer. When it came up in the start menu, I right clicked on it, then clicked on Properties. That got me a pop-up saying that the target was %systemroot%\system32\xpsrchvw.exe , instead of something located in C:\\Program Files (x86). Is that the thing to be substituted somewhere in the quoted string that begins with “C:\\ ? If so, I’m at a loss to figure out exactly what that string should say.

I’ve gone on at some length to give you (and anyone else who responds) an idea of what I’m capable of understanding and of not understanding at all.

I do appreciate your taking the time to respond, but, as you can see, your suggestion so far has me confused.

I’d appreciate any further thoughts on this issue.

Thanks.

Sorry. I guess I should have addressed that in my original message. I did try Continue Anyway. It didn’t work.

Maybe it’s affected by the fact that my keyboard requires the use of the Fn key in combination with Scroll Lock (it’s the Home key when Fn isn’t used). But that hardly means that the latter is “unassigned.” It just works one way with the Fn key, and another without it. And in any case, it’s the “you won’t be able to use them” part that’s really the issue. I just focused on “unassigned,” since the message implies that that’s the cause of my woe.

Sorry I’m so tardy in thanking people for their responses. I had a bad case of the flu (guess I have to be thankful it was that, and not coronavirus), and simply was not up to dealing with the computer. I may now have more questions, especially regarding Syncthing, but that will have to wait for me to get my head on straight.

So for now, let me just say thanks.

I installed Everything and searched for “itunes.” The attachment shows what it turned up.

And here’s some info on the various things listed there.

The folder Apple Computer\iTunes contains a file named iPodDevices.xml, plus two empty sub-folders.

The folder iTunes Plug-ins is empty

The next two folders are hidden folders. I opened one, and it contained numerous files, many having a name that began “AppCrash_bad_module_info_”. I have no idea what that’s all about, whether it’s as bad as it sounds.

No idea what’s inside that folder named “AppleInc.iTunes…” Trying to opening it through Everything produces a message that I may not have the appropriate permission to access it. I didn’t try to access it through the Administrator account. In my user account, I went to C:\ProgramData\Packages, and couldn’t open it there either. No message was produced, just silence.

The next iTunes folder, contained in D:\Computer\Programs, is irrelevant, since it’s merely where I keep mostly text files that I’ve created relating to my various programs.

The next two folders contain the versions of iTunes that I’ve been unable to install because of interference from the MS Store iTunes.

D:\Music\iTunes is where iTunes Library.itl and several other files reside.

D:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media contains music & podcasts that I loaded into iTunes.

The folder D:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes is empty.

There’s additional stuff, such as icons in the cache, shortcuts in Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent and .pf files in the prefetch folder. And that seems to be it.

Does any of this suggest anything?

Thanks.

Thanks for that information.

Looks like the thing to do is simply disable the thing from startup as Rick suggested. I’ve now done that, and hope that the issue can rest there.

Thanks. I figured it had something to do with internet speed, but that’s pretty much where my understanding stopped.

 

 

Well, there it was. Guess I should have familiarized myself with Geekuninstaller a little better before posting back here. (Shows how eager I am to get rid of the MS Store iTunes).

But unfortunately, although I then uninstalled iTunes, along with the single registry entry that Geekuninstaller had found, my attempt, after rebooting, to install an older version of iTunes failed again. I still get the message that a newer version of iTunes is already installed.

I did a quick search of the registry, and of course there are numerous items there that include “itunes.” I stopped looking after I’d found 30 of them.

Is there another way to proceed from here? Go through the registry and delete everything “itunes” related? Something else?

Thanks.

 

Well, I’ve tried everything that was suggested so far, and nothing has worked.

I started with the instructions at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204275. With one exception, none of the things listed there for uninstallation seemed to exist on my computer. The single exception was found via Win + R | Type in %program files% | Enter. There was a subfolder named iPod, which I deleted per the instructions. Finding nothing else, I followed the instructions concluding steps, and emptied the Recycle Bin and then rebooted.

After that I tried again to install my older version of iTunes. No go, as before.

I then went to the Apple site and downloaded the most recent version that could be obtained as an executable. (Although that site refers you to the MS Store for the latest version, there’s a link “Find previous versions of iTunes”, which I used to download the most recent pre-MS Store executable. It wouldn’t install either.

So I went back to the MS Store and installed iTunes again, in order to uninstall it afresh, this time with Revo. But Revo wouldn’t do it, evidently because whatever it is that the MS Store installs doesn’t put a traditional exe file anywhere for Revo find.

I then downloaded and tried Geekuninstaller. as suggested. It didn’t work either. After I launched the program it provided a list of programs by name. iTunes wasn’t included, even though it’s definitely back on my computer (assuming that it was ever really gone, which starts to look doubtful). Nor was there anything under “Apple” or “Bonjour.” There was a little item called “iPod support.” Don’t know what to make of that one, especially since looking for “ipod” in Windows Search didn’t turn up anything (other than a couple of text files that I created). In any case, since iTunes isn’t just an “iPod support” program, that obviously could not be the principal thing I have to delete.

That’s it for how I tried to uninstall iTunes for the second time. But to top it off, I summoned back up the instructions at the Apple site I had been referred to, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204275. This time, with iTunes having been installed again, I looked for the various things that those instructions say should be deleted, starting with “iTunes” itself. Again, with the exception of the iPod folder found via Win + R | type in %program files% | Enter, nothing in the list could be found.

This all makes me wonder whether Apple designed these instructions with the MS Store version of iTunes in mind.

Indeed, there seems to be something very strange (and annoying) about programs installed directly from the MS Store. I’ve installed only once previous program from that source – software for my HP printer. Can’t remember what it was called, other than that it’s name included the wildly ill-suited word “Smart”. It turned out to be a piece of not-fully-functional eye candy which – surprise, surprise! – did something that, even after I uninstalled it, prevented me from later installing an executable that I downloaded directly from HP. Even with the help of tech support I was never able to get the printer up and running with my new desktop, until I finally restored Windows to factory condition. Not what I wanted.

This is more than a rant. Since I’m two for two with the MS Store, so let this be a warning to others.

But back to my iTunes problem. Does anyone have any other suggestions? Other than a factory reset of Windows?

Thanks.

That is a big help. Thanks.

A side note: I inadvertently posted this to the wrong forum, and was about to re-copy to Questions Win10, but got your answer already, so no need to. So thanks again.

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Elly

I’ll try that.

Thanks.

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