Safely_Remove_Hardware_and_eject_media.txt

This is an issue I have had for years, and the reason I am creating this site, because I could find absolutely 0 solutions or possible issues online.

It has persisted through reinstalls, virus scans, file integrity checks, and more

The #1 symptom is, when selecting the "safely remove hardware and eject media button" in the windows task bar, the window to select media to eject didn't appear for 30 seconds to a minute. This made working on my external nvme drive a pain.

Lets cut to the chase though, the solution.
The problem turned out to be an extremely old SD, and SD related media reader installed in my pc. It didn't work, so I never used it, and had mostly forgotten about it. I figured it out because I finally watched event viewer while I clicked on the remove media button, and I got disk controller errors showing up. after a little bit of digging, an article mentioned simply having a broken sd card reader, and after disconnecting the interal usb port on my pc, the issues I have been having have (so far) disappeared.

Some symptoms I suspect were caused by this (* means I can confirm they were caused by this issue)
*delay when opening remove media menu
*delay when opening file explorer on my pc for the first time, or for the first time in a while
*very long (several minute) delay when opening disk managment
semi random (maybe only with an external nvme drive) usb controller crashes (I think thats what every usb device disconnecting and reconnecting is)
delay with shutting down computer (Eventually I modified the registry to force shutdown at 30 seconds or something)
delay when right clicking on thumb drives (they might just be old and slow)
*steam hangs when installing game and opening install device selection window
7zip hangs when opening window to choose where to extract files

Some things I noticed about my system because of this (they may or may not be problems/symptoms)
the remove device button doesn't who up in the task bar if you don't have a device plugged in
device manager has many empty disks (one for each of the ports on the old sd card reader)

I am elated that I have fixed this, and if you are having this same issue, I hope this can help you out too. If you have any other questions, feel free to raise an issue on this repo.