Eject USB devices faster in Windows Vista

Windows Vista has made my day to day life much easier, but still one annoying bastion of the old days remains: The eject USB device button.

Ejecting devices is still a fiddly process, and having to find that tiny button on the taskbar means that my devices are usually pulled out in a hurry, which is not a good practice. That’s until I created a simple desktop shortcut which ejects my devices on demand. Here’s how to make one:

1. Shortcut

On your desktop right-click choose New and Shortcut. In the resulting target box simply paste:

 RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

Rename the icon and job done! Now when you double click the eject box will appear- but we can do much better than that.

2. Assign

Right click on the icon and go to properties. In the shortcut box you can assign a hotkey to do the job for you.

3. Brighten up

Now that’s working we just have to worry about that drab white icon. This is easily solved by clicking ‘change icon’ in properties. Browse to the Windows > System 32> shell32.dll and as if by magic a library of icons will appear!