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I have an external disk (MyBook) that I always plug in and out of my PC. The problem now is that when I want to stop the MyBook USB device, I get a "cannot be stopped right now" error.

Is there any way, to use the Process Explorer to check what is holding my external disk, and thus preventing me from stopping it?

2 Answers 2

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Hit menu Find -> Handle or DLL... and then put in the drive letter for your external drive, for example, F:\. This should show you a list of all of the processes holding handles (links to files) on that drive.

From @nwboson: Be sure to run procexp.exe as an administrator to ensure you are searching all processes. That is, don't just click on Process Explorer to run it, but instead right click it and do a 'Run as Administrator'.

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    Not sure whether your answer is correct; when I did the above, I found that no process was holding my external hard disk
    – Graviton
    Jan 21, 2010 at 16:02
  • you could try searching "\Device" instead, but you'll get a lot of results.
    – alumb
    Jan 22, 2010 at 1:46
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I'm not 100% sure this will work, but it'd be a good start. Try Filemon: Click Here

If that doesn't work, you may want to look at the following disk tools to see if any of these work: Click Here

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    The author stated he wanted a solution in Process Explorer.
    – Gnoupi
    Jan 20, 2010 at 16:50

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