My new laptop has a removable DVD drive, which is nice, but I’ll rarely–if ever–remove it and because it’s removable Windows puts the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the system tray, which is annoying to someone who is as nuerotic and anal-retentive as I am. If you search for a way to remove it most webpages will only give you bad workarounds (like hiding the icon itself instead of changing the device to be considered non-removable) or tell you it’s impossible to fix. But, I found a real solution in a usenet post and thought it’d be helpful to write out some clear instructions on how to remove a device from the ‘Safety Remove Hardware’ app