Can't eject Maxtor External HDD in WinXP

[TechnoBro]

I installed a Maxtor OneTouch USB external hard drive on my WinXP PC and it works great except I can't eject the drive using the "safely remove hardware" icon. I get the message: "The device 'Generic volume' cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later". All files and apps are closed, including Norton A/V. Disabled autorun and write caching and nothing seems to help. This doesn't seem to be a problem when ejecting from a Win2000 PC.