Well, now that I'm FINALLY posting this on my new 'puter, I'm running into a couple of problems. The biggest of which is the icon in the system tray telling me that I can safely remove hardware. The problem is, there's isn't hardware that I installed that is removable. It's not the video cards, can't be the memory either or the hard drive OR the new DVD/CD drive I bought. The only thing I can think of is the USB port PCI card I bought to substitute for the supplied 4-port USB port that the mobo came with (so I can free up the USB connectors on the mobo for the case USBs on the front).

How can I fix this problem? I already installed the drivers from the CD.

Do you have a flash drive, and did you check all your connections?

What kind of MoBo do you have? Mine (ASUS nforce) has the hard drive (as in the SATA drive with windows on it) available to disconnect. It is part of the ASUS mobility package...

Nope, no flash drive.

As for mobo model, it's the eVGA nForce 680i SLi motherboard. I didn't know it would recognize it as a removable device. Is there a way to disable that? I can see it annoying the heck out of me.

Also, it's not gonna hurt if I disconnect the bezel indicator lights, will it? I'm not sure I hooked it up correctly as the light keeps flashing instead of staying on. I'm thinking about disconnecting it permanently. It's just lights, so it shouldn't matter, right?

If you click on the safely remove hardware icon does it list any hardware that can be removed? You can set the icon to "always hide" if it bugs you.

I'm too afraid to click on it. I mean, I right-click on it and the only thing that shows up is "Safely Remove Hardware."

Did a little research, though. Seems like JPHarvey touched on something there, the SATA drives are apparently hot swappable. I can't see why they would do something like that, but no matter, I'll just go into Control Panels and hide that icon. Stupid glitch, if you ask me.

Don't worry about clicking on it, it won't remove anything yet - there are more stages to go through. It appears on my system also, and when I click on it it gives me the option to remove my CD/DVD drive. I just set it to always hide.

There's some registry edits I found online that should do the trick, namely adding a DWORD value to the hard drive registry key. Question is, I'm not sure where to find it. I mean, I run regedit, but have no clue where it is or where to add it. For that matter, don't know how to add a registry key either, and I generally don't like to mess with registries.

Have you had a look at the drivers installed as part of the nVidia chipset package?

Go into Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs and click Change/Remove on the nVidia Drivers. It should come up with a list of the drivers installed - see if one of them is the hot-swappable driver for the HDDs...

Just click on the Safely Remove Hardware icon. The next screen will present you with a list of choices. One of the buttons on that page will say "Properties" - check this to see what the device is. Without doing this you'll only be guessing what it is - and messing with the registry like this is sure recipe for disaster!

For the record, it IS the SATA HD and CD/DVD showing up as removable. I COULD edit the registry so the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon would be removed. Then again, I can just permanently hide it. I guess it just bothers me a little bit knowing it's there.

While it's possible that the CD/DVD drive could be removable - it's very unlikely. But the SATA drive (unless it's plugged into a USB port) will not be removable.

So, there's something "weird" with your windows installation. I'd first suggest trying SFC.EXE from the Run dialog ( http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic43051.html )

Next, I'd try updating your motherboard/chipset drivers.

Finally, I'd try a repair install of Windows (this'll save your data and programs, but will reinstall the Windows files that SFC.EXE doesn't): http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

SATA2 driver are hot-swappable, which mean you can use the "Safely Remove Hardware" to remove the SATA drive without turning off the machine (as long as it isn't the one with windows on it). And if the DVD-drive is SATA as well it also is removable. Everything is in order.

I figured as much. Researched it quite a bit online and I'm not the only one with this problem. It's just a bit of nuisance is all.

But thanks!