Why does my computer tell me i can safely remove my hard drive???
i've had the icon in my tool bar since i installed the new computer 3 months ago
can i stop it telling me to remove my hard drive?

is that you are using external hardisk?

looks like the system drive

must have an nvidia chipset on the motherboard

i do have an external hard drive, but hardly use it, may be once a week to make backups or drag old stuff onto my new computer, it's powered off 99% of the time

That would be my guess.

Splodge, this can happen, because SATA drives are hot-swappable, they are therefore a removeable device. As the system drive obviously cannot be removed whilst Windows is running, most people just ignore it.

It's frequently seen on a motherboard with an nVidia nForce chipset. If this is your situation, it can supposedly be corrected with an edit to the Windows Registry. Some people avoid altering the registry, if you do so, be aware of the risk of something going wrong, back up the registry before making any changes.

These are the instructions provided:

"If you have a Nforce4 Based Motherboard and your sata drives are showing up in Safely Remove Hardware, this registry hack will allow you to fix it.

1. Click Start -> Run
2. Execute regedit
3. Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvata

4. Click Edit
5. Select New > DWORD value
6. Name this DWORD: DisableRemovable
7. Double click this new DWORD and set its value to one (1).
8. Close Regedit and reboot

This works on the Nforce3 also and the registry line may be HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvatabus"

ok thanks guys, i think i'll leave it alone sounds the safest thing to do