The device ‘Generic volume’ cannot be stopped

I have a USB hard drive which I use to store some of my data.

I hooked it up to a Windows XP PC.

All went fine until when I had to remove it. Most XP users will have to remove it software-sided through Windows’ Safely Remove Hardware.

Many times I would encounter the following error:

“The device ‘Generic volume’ cannot be stopped because a program is still accessing it”

I got so fed up with it that I decided to search for a fix.

I found one very simple fix. Simply open another drive.

For example, my USB drive was on G:\, and C:\ is where my Windows XP is based. I simply open C:\ and I am able to remove it.

Task Manager missing

I got the following error when I tried to open Task Manager while using a Vista PC.

“C:\Windows\System32\taskmgr.exe

The specified path does not exist. Check path and then try again.”

That was when I tried to open Task Manager through the taskbar.

When I first got that error, I thought it was because I was using a cloned Vista installation (from another partition).

However I thought it could be other reasons, and I did a search on Google.

I eventually found out that it was due to installing Process Explorer, clicking “Replace Task Manager”, then deleting Process Explorer.

I tried reproducing the error on XP. I did not get any error message, but Task Manager did not open either.

The solution? Launch Process Explorer (doesn’t matter where the files are placed) and click “Restore Task Manager”.