How can I safely remove hardware? I'm having issues with it

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 7:53 pm

So i got the magicjack and i noticed i cant even safely remove hardware. I know how to do it as i've used usb keys and external hard drives all the time and that works fine.

So of course i cant safely remove hardware cause magicjack softphone is still running. So i create a shortcut and make it exit so it can go away. So i go back to the safely remove hardware and still says it cannot be stopped cause another program is still accessing it.

So what other program other then the one i exited is still running and wont let me safely remove hardware.

I tried to do a search on the site to see if others are having issues but i couldnt really find any solution so i thought i would make a post and see if anyone can help me?

kuhntech · Post by **kuhntech** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 7:56 pm

Go into Task Manager and kill the magicjack.exe process then remove the MJ hardware.

bitstopjoe · Post by **bitstopjoe** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 7:57 pm

What I did was go into the task mgr and end magicjack.exe. After I did that and waited about 30 seconds I was then able to safely remove hardware for the MJ drives.
Stinks to have to go through these extra steps, but like you, I ALWAYS did a safely remove hardware everytime I rebooted, powered down or unplugged my MJ.. Has served me well for close to 2 yrs now doing it that way.
I think I posted this elsewhere today but I am sure it was not something a search would show up very easily.

Joe Sica

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:10 pm

Hey there did the whole kill process and it waited like 20 minutes or even as long as 2 hours and just gave up and said ok i cant safely remove hardware so i dont know why it works for you but not for me.

bitstopjoe · Post by **bitstopjoe** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:16 pm

Yes that is odd, maybe something else running is causing the coflict? I assume you have tried close all other unnecessary programs?

Joe Sica

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:19 pm

Nothing else is running except for the usual like firewall and virus scanner and thats it. When i got to do safely removal hardware i dont have anything running and again just the usual 2 items.

bitstopjoe · Post by **bitstopjoe** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:28 pm

Well for the heck of it I would close first the AV and then try to safely remove, and if that doesnt work, then the firewall.

I remember years ago I used Zone Alarm Firewall and it was stopping a scan from running after the PC was rebooted. So stranger things have happened. Currently I use Comodo.

Give it a shot and see.

Joe Sica

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:29 pm

kuhntech wrote:Go into Task Manager and kill the magicjack.exe process then remove the MJ hardware.

Wouldnt that ruin the hardware of magicjack? Wouldnt it corrupt whats programming the magicjack next time you put it in and do it over and over again?

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:30 pm

bitstopjoe wrote:Well for the heck of it I would close first the AV and then try to safely remove, and if that doesnt work, then the firewall.

I remember years ago I used Zone Alarm Firewall and it was stopping a scan from running after the PC was rebooted. So stranger things have happened. Currently I use Comodo.

Give it a shot and see.

Joe Sica

Ya i use comodo too.

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:33 pm

Joe what do you do to safely remove hardware? Do you just left click on the icon and click on the usb mass storage device it has listed cause for me it has 2 drives listed on the same line. So i click on that and of course it wont let me remove the hardware.

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:46 pm

K Joe sorry but still doesnt work and i truly dont know what on earth is making me not being able to safely remove hardware. Ive done this maybe 6 times with the removing the magicjack process and then doing the whole safely remove hardware which doesnt work then unplugging and replugging it back in and doing the steps once again so for the 6 times ive done it never seems to want to work and its frustrating.

bitstopjoe · Post by **bitstopjoe** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:46 pm

Actually it is easier to just left click once over the safely remove hardware icon ( drive with green arrow above it). Then you will see a list and just left click again on the MJ drives and they will be removed. Of course this is how I did it till this update. Now I have to close MagicJack.exe first and then remove the MJ drives.

Joe Sica

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 8:58 pm

K Joe you really have my confused are you having issues safely removing hardware or not cause i thought you had no issues doing it and now your telling me you are having issues?

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 9:53 pm

Joe i read on another thread that u have xp SP3? I have SP2 maybe thats also why i cant do this safely remove hardware? Maybe tomorrow since its getting a bit to late in the night to do a major windows update i will look into updating to sp3 and seeing it fixes anything.

Darkman90808 · Post by **Darkman90808** » Tue Mar 02, 2010 11:56 pm

This may be dated information, what with all the upgrades, but I believe you can do a search for a file called mjkill.exe. I downloaded it and used it for a while, but didn't really have a need for it.

But I thought I would mention it, FWIW.

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Wed Mar 03, 2010 12:21 am

What does the mjkill.exe do? How are you able to safely remove hardware now?

I think Joe has SP3 and i got SP2 so maybe thats why the safely remove hardware wont work after i kill the magicjack.exe process.

Darkman90808 wrote:This may be dated information, what with all the upgrades, but I believe you can do a search for a file called mjkill.exe. I downloaded it and used it for a while, but didn't really have a need for it.

But I thought I would mention it, FWIW.

bitstopjoe · Post by **bitstopjoe** » Wed Mar 03, 2010 7:12 am

Yes I have XP SP3..
I can safely remove hardware AFTER I close magicjack.exe in the task mgr. Prior to the new MJ release I never had to stop magicjack.exe first to safely remove hardware.

Joe Sica

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Thu Mar 04, 2010 9:10 pm

K Joe this is really frustrating cause i after closing the magicjack.exe i still cant release the hardware safely. So do you think its cause i dont have SP3 and i only have SP2?

bitstopjoe · Post by **bitstopjoe** » Thu Mar 04, 2010 9:18 pm

It's possible I guess yes.
You can always go back to SP2 ( add/remove programs) if for some reason SP3 doesnt work well for you or messes up other things.

I guess it is worth a shot as I have been running SP3 for 2 years now I think, maybe more. Whenever it came out in fact. Have had zero problems with it and the MJ. I would, however, make sure you close as many uneeded programs, including your MJ, prior to installing SP3. ALWAYS a good idea anway to shut down everything but the bare esentials whenever installing something new. It has never served me wrong doing that. PLUS I make an image of my C: drive first this way in case of problems I just restore and I am right back to where I was prior to installing anything. A REAL life saver.
Let me know if SP3 does it for you

Joe Sica

freestylegreek · Post by **freestylegreek** » Thu Mar 04, 2010 9:27 pm

Thanks Joe. When i restart my pc the first thing i will do is install SP3 and i know nothing about making an image. I tried that once but it didnt go so well so i wont be bothering touching that.

bitstopjoe · Post by **bitstopjoe** » Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:46 am

I just saw this on another web page which makes removing the MJ hardware safely much easier after the update. :
Create a new shortcut. When it comes up and says type in the location, paste the following w/o quotes:
" %windir%\System32\taskkill.exe /F /IM magicJack.exe "
Hit NEXT.
It will call it killtask.exe, or something like that. I renamed it to " MJ Kill ". You can name it to your preference.

Now, I shrink the MJ window, double-click the MJ Kill shortcut, and then use the little green arrow to safely eject the hardware as before.

Great find! Works in XP SP3.

Certainly beats my racing around over the screen. Better yet, it works!!

This was posted on http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r238851 ... e~start=20

Works like a charm..

Joe Sica

kevinzlarue · Post by **kevinzlarue** » Thu Mar 18, 2010 12:09 am

This may already be established, but this is a new phenomenon. I only began seeing the "already accessing device" error message in the last week or so. I presume there is a MJ update involved that caused the problem. Of course, the program never displays an update or version number to know whether or when you have been manually or voluntarily updated. I'll try the .exe method.

And to think I just trained the wife to safely remove hardware and now I have to introduce a new step.

manual · Post by **manual** » Thu Mar 18, 2010 3:21 pm

according to customer service, this is part of their newest upgrade. i was told to just remove to dongle without worrying about using "safely remove hardware."

not sure how it will affect the stability of win xp sp3, but guess i won't worry about it...unless i find it makes my system unstable.

hsweiss · Post by **hsweiss** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 11:40 am

manual wrote:according to customer service, this is part of their newest upgrade. i was told to just remove to dongle without worrying about using "safely remove hardware."

not sure how it will affect the stability of win xp sp3, but guess i won't worry about it...unless i find it makes my system unstable.

I've had my MJ for over 2 years and during that time I've simply removed the dongle. Its never caused a problem for the MJ or any of the XP machines its been removed from (at least 2, maybe 3 machines).

satrider · Post by **satrider** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 5:32 pm

I run Windows 7 and their is an option somewhere in control panel to safely remove hardware. One option saves a cache and the other dosn't. So I don't think phisically damaging harware is an issue

bitstopjoe · Post by **bitstopjoe** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 5:48 pm

It is not so much in damaging the MJ as it is the softphone had this habit of opening and then closing accces to the dongle every 3-5 seconds. If you happen to pull it out AS it was doing that it could corrupt the MJ software on the dongle. This is maybe why so many people had to format their MJ's and then reload the software.. The softphone no longer does this so the chance of messing up the dongle is now minimized. That being said I still prefer to safely remove hardware prior to powering off my PC and removing my MJ dongle.

Joe Sica