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Want An Easier Way To Disconnect A USB Device? Try ‘Eject’

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 03:00 AM PST

Whenever you connect a USB storage device in Windows, an icon is present in the taskbar allowing you to click and "remove safely" with a right click:

The only real annoyance here is that the icon for it is tiny; it’s too easy to accidentally click on another icon near it.

The alternative method for disconnecting a USB storage device is to use ‘Eject’ from the Explorer.

From "Computer":

From Explorer:

After selecting ‘Eject’, Windows 7 will notify you it’s safe to remove the device:

Does this work in XP?

To be honest, I’m not exactly sure.

The ‘Eject’ option exists on the context menus, but it does not appear to disconnect USB storage devices completely (the device will still be listed in Explorer/"My Computer" as "Removable Device"), so I’ll have to give this one a no for trying this in XP.

If however anyone wants to chime in on whether the ‘Eject’ method for USB storage devices actually does work in XP properly, feel free to post a comment below.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Want An Easier Way To Disconnect A USB Device? Try ‘Eject’

Virtual PC Cheat Sheet For Shared Networking In Older Windows

Posted: 21 Feb 2011 09:00 AM PST

More people are setting up virtual PCs today than ever. Whether it’s for legacy applications, old games or just for nostalgia, having virtual computers is becoming much more common.

One of the biggest gripes about virtual PCs can be boiled down to a single question:

How do I share files between the virtual PC and the host computer?

This is the question I’ll do my best to answer in this documentation.

Before continuing, there is virtual PC software that makes it easy to get all this done, such as VMWare Workstation, however that’s a paid program. You’re most likely using the free Virtualbox or VMWare Player. This documentation will go on the assumption you’re using the free method that doesn’t have the extra easy-use networking perks Workstation has.

Step 1. Use Bridged Networking

In VMWare Player and Virtualbox, the default networking setup is NAT. For shared folders this really isn’t a good choice. Bridged networking on the other hand works much better.

In VMWare Player:

In Virtualbox:

When you use NAT, the IP assigned to the virtual machine will be a Class A, like 10.10.10.100. With bridged, the IP assigned will be a Class C that follows your current router schema, like 192.168.0.5.

What using a bridged setting does is allow you to discover the IP address of the machine much easier and make it more accessible from the host computer. In fact, when using bridged, you will see the address of your virtual PC listed in your router’s connected-device list as if it were an actual machine.

Also, if you’ve ever set up a virtual PC that absolutely will not connect to the internet no matter what you do, it’s probably because you used NAT. Change to bridged and eureka, internet works.

Step 2. In-to-out and not out-to-in

The first reaction by most people is to create a shared folder outside the session on the host computer for the virtual PC to connect to. Sometimes this will either work poorly or not at all. If you create an in-session shared folder, this works much better.

Example using Windows 98SE:

Enabling file sharing via Control Panel / Network

File and printer sharing is enabled

Create folder on desktop, right-click, Sharing

Give full access permissions, Apply, OK

Example using Windows 2000:

Create folder on Desktop, right-click, Sharing

Share the folder, Apply, OK. Default permissions will be "Full Access" if logged in as Administrator.

Step 3. Get Virtual PC’s IP, PING from host to test

Using Windows 98SE:

Start / Run / winipcfg, local IP information is shown

Using Windows 2000:

Start / Run / cmd / ipconfig, local IP information is shown

PING test from host (Windows 7) to virtual (Windows 2000)

scrn
PING is successful; everything checks out

Step 4. PING workgroup name of virtual PC

In Windows-to-Windows environments you can directly PING the name of the computer. It’s good to do this so you have two ways of connecting to a virtual computer network share, covered in the next section.

I have a VMWare Player session of Windows 98SE open, and my defined workgroup name for that computer is vbox-win98. I PING this name directly to see if I get a reply:

ping

This works, so now I have two ways of direct-connecting to my share.

Step 5. Connect to virtual PC’s network share

The traditional method of connecting to a network share from a workgroup-connected Windows PC in the Windows environment is the whack-whack method, like this via the Explorer’s address bar:

\\workgroup-name-of-virtual-pc

The two backslashes are called ‘whacks’ because it’s easier to say than ‘backslash backslash’. If the workgroup name of the computer was ‘banana’ for example, you would verbalize this as "Connect to whack-whack banana."

Typing whack-whack followed by workgroup name in Explorer would look like this:

…and do this:

If this doesn’t work, you can alternatively type in whack-whack followed by the IP of the virtual PC, like this:

…to get this:

One or the other will work.

Why not simply use the ‘known’ list of computers on the left sidebar in Explorer or "Network Neighborhood"?

There is this:

…however this is not always guaranteed to work due to the on-again/off-again way virtual PCs are used. It’s probably true you don’t have the virtual PC running all the time and only have it launched when you need it; this can somewhat screw up Windows’ method of network discovery as well as other host OSes.

Connecting direct-by-name or direct-by-IP is more or less a force-refresh way of going about it. This is fine because you want the host to "realize" that the virtual PC is there, ready and waiting for incoming connections to its share.

It’s also true that if the virtual Windows operating environment is a version prior to Windows 2000, it won’t update its network status as much as you’d like; this is why in some instances no matter how much you refresh, the network name just won’t show up in the list.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Virtual PC Cheat Sheet For Shared Networking In Older Windows