Oh yea, I forgot to add. The icon is not a threat, it will not (in my experience) stop the HDD if it is in use, so since this HDD has my Windows and other stuff loaded on it, it's always in use. It merely sates that the device cannot be stopped and that I should try again later.

I had the same problem with an ecs motherboard with VIA chipset and sata drive. I downloaded the latest VIA hyperion driver from ecs and installed them by choosing the update optioon in setup, Then I unchecked the sata hotplug auto detection before installation, problem fixed.

Great idea and something to keep in mind for next time. I took the quick route in the end. I formatted the PC and just didn't load the ASUS drivers second time around. This also worked like a charm, but I was lucky, it was still a new istallation so no data was lost.

How would this work for VISTA 64?
TY

Yes Please how bout on Vista premium 64 bit? I've seen
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ nvstor64 ?
is this the one?

For all windows including vista use this program it costs you nothing. no trial bs either. I used it and it works perfect. you can remove the icon or put it back any time. iconremover.c o m I had to add the spaces between the c o m because
techspot would not allow the link. just get rid of the spaces in c o m

So tired of everyone not providing an answer that works. If you can't provide an answer, don't write anything.

I think some chipsets, especially nVidia uses USB to mount its sata/ide channel, so windows will report the harwares as removable..

somebody found a way to set the "Capabilities" setting in the hardware list in registry. one way to make the setting stick, you have to export the setting as a reg file, and run it everytime windows reboot.. (start up folder, registry run keys, etc..)

this problem gives a lot of nuisance to us users.. from newbie who is clueless about the "safely remove harware (SRH)" icon in taskbar, to season users who now accidently dismount built-in optical drive from the SRH list, and nuisance that includes our dear problem with safely remove system drive aka C:\ or (other built-in drive), if you could not just ignore it, or unable to go fly a kite..

in xp, sometimes you can set as "Non Removable" somewhere.. but not always..

something else u need to do, if you want to line up your notification icon to your likings, is search for "delay program startup" and get third party program to sequence startup.. you may find more program to customize your taskbar notification area icons etc.. customization are endless....

cherios...

Had similar issue except the Ethernet controller was displayed under "Safely remove hardware". I disabled "Lan Power Saving" in my BIOS. Worked for me.