Safely Remove Hardware

My XP desktop stopped allowing the "Safely Remove Hardware" function months ago, on External Hard drives, even the multi-type storage card reader that came internally with the PC.

Today, I shutdown, then remove or power off the hardware, when needed. I ran into problems just removing the devices without getting an 'ok' once, so I don't do that anymore. I have avoided "forcing a dismount, or a stop device".

When I try to use the function, I get the message "The device 'Generic volume' cannot be stopped right now, Try stopping the device later."

I close all open windows and close all applications under task manager before doing this, because I know if a device is attached to an application, it will not close, and allow it's removal. But, today, this does not help.

I recently added a new Ext HD and it did (1) clean 'device remove', before I stored anything on it. I then just copied a small word doc to it and it would no longer safely remove. I then deleted that file, and it still will not safely remove normally.

All Ext. HD's that fail to remove on this XP desktop, still remove fine on my XP laptop.

Does anyone know have troubleshooting ideas on this?

Thanking You.....