USB Drives plugged in but no Safely Remove Icon in Tray, and no drives listed in Safely Remove Dialog

[smartcooky]

When I plug USB drives in, the Safely Remove Hardware icon does not appear in the system tray at all (its not hidden either). First, I went to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Select which Icons Appear on the Taskbar...

.. and found it was already switched on. Next I tried using the solution in this post from TenForums...

Solved No safely remove icon in tray any more after Windows 10 Anniversary up - Windows 10 Forums

...making a shortcut from "rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll", but when I run the shortcut, there are no devices listed...

(in this screenshot, you can see two USB drives in the Explorer window in the background but nothing listed in the panel. )

NOTE: The USB drives are listed in Disk Management and in the Device Manager under Disk Drives, and they function just fine..

I think the Safely Remove Hardware icon is not appearing because despite being detected and showing in Explorer, Device Manager and Disk Management, its not being listed in this panel for some reason.

NOTE2: I recently installed a new motherboard.

ASUS B150M-A
CPU Intel Core i5 - 6500 (3.2 GHz)
Mem 4096 MB (DDR4 - 2133)

I am 100% sure it was working before that, but I cannot say for sure if it was still working after that.
A friend suggested that it might be a setting in BIOS, but I have looked through it and nothing stands out.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

[Colif]

Was the previous motherboard close to the current one or all new chipset?

Did you fresh install win 10 onto motherboard? If you didn't, did you uninstall the old motherboard drivers and install the new ones? If you didn't, I am amazed this is only problem you have had

Do the drives show in explorer?

Do you have latest motherboard drivers from Asus site?

 

[smartcooky]

Was the previous motherboard close to the current one or all new chipset?

Previous motherboard was an Intel D101GGC with a Pentium-D CPU, 2GB Ram.

Did you fresh install win 10 onto motherboard? If you didn't, did you uninstall the old motherboard drivers and install the new ones?

No, I didn't fresh install and I didn't need to. All of the motherboard drivers for the ASUS B-150M-A were installed from the USB stick that came with the board.

If you didn't, I am amazed this is only problem you have had

The computer runs perfectly and has done for several weeks without any problems other than this Safely Remove issue.

Do the drives show in explorer?

Yes they do (see the screenshot in my OP. You can see two USB drives in explorer in the background. They also appear in Disk Management and in the Device Manager under Disk Drives. They just don't appear in the Safely Remove panel

As a temporary workaround, I have downloaded and installed a trial version of "USB Safely Remove". It works perfectly

Do you have latest motherboard drivers from Asus site?

No, because the ones I installed came with the motherboard. Do you think I should get them anyway?

 

[Colif]

did you try turning the icon off and on again in Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Select which Icons Appear on the Taskbar... as stranger things have worked in the past

Do you have latest windows update, someone had something like this 3 weeks ago and an update fixed it.

you got an answer on your tenforums post I hadn't seen on my travels.

your last motherboard was 10 years old, surprised it worked in 10 at all and only drivers i see there are for linux now

 

[smartcooky]

did you try turning the icon off and on again in Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Select which Icons Appear on the Taskbar... as stranger things have worked in the past

Yes I tried that. No luck

Do you have latest windows update, someone had something like this 3 weeks ago and an update fixed it.

I must have. As I said, I have the computer do a restart at 5am every day. Its Windows 10 Home, so you cannot turn off updates. According to Settings > Updates & Security > Windows Update >

"Your device is up to date. Last checked: Today, ‏‎2:42 PM"
Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1607 (KB3197954)

you got an answer on your tenforums post I hadn't seen on my travels.

Yes and that is the peculiar thing. The USB drives all work fine, they are showing in Explorer, Disk Management and Device Management, so why are they not listed in the Device List managed by rundll32.exe ?

your last motherboard was 10 years old, surprised it worked in 10 at all and only drivers i see there are for linux now

When I first installed Win 10 on the computer (when it had the D101GGC board), I used the original chipset driver install disk and ran the install program in compatibility mode for XP SP3. It worked fine, even if the computer was a little on the slow side

 

[Colif]

Try this
right click start button
choose command prompt (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter

Once its done, copy/paste this into same window:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

DISM cleans the image that SFC uses to clean windows system files - these might fix it.

 

[smartcooky]

Try this
right click start button
choose command prompt (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter

Once its done, copy/paste this into same window:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

DISM cleans the image that SFC uses to clean windows system files - these might fix it.

Did all that. It didn't fix the problem

 

[Colif]

Its not that I am ignoring this, its just i can't find any other suggestions and you seem to be getting somewhere on tenforums.