How to get rid of “Compressed (zipped) Folders” popup?

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When I plug in a USB flash drive and click on it in Windows Explorer (I’m using W7, SP1), I get the following popup message:

35387-Popup-when-flash-drive-is-opened

If I click “OK,” it does nothing, so I have to click “Cancel” to get rid of it. I’ve tried another flash drive and it doesn’t occur, nor does it seem to occur every time I plug in that one particular flash drive.

If anybody knows why this is happening and how to get this popup message to go away, I’d be most grateful.

Cheers,
Al

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Al,

Looks like the USB was used previously with a backup program.

Zig

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Do you have anything on the flash drive you need to access?

If not, re-format it through Windows explorer and that should prevent that message.

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Hi, Zig and Browni,

Thanks for your posts. Yes, I’ve used a backup program to create backup disk images of that flash drive on my HDD, as that flash drive has all my portable apps and utilities on it. As a result, I do need to access it, but presumably I could simply restore it from the backup image. However, if I just do a restore, will I not also be restoring whatever issue there currently is with the flash drive? One other thought – though it would be a fairly slow process – might be to simply copy all files and folders on the flash drive to my HDD within Windows Explorer, either directly or into a ZIP file, then format the flash drive and reload all the files.

Cheers,
Al

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Al,

Sounds like a plan to me.

Zig

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Just Drag and Drop the files/apps you wish to save to a folder on your HD, format the Flash Drive, then drag and drop your files/apps back to the Flash Drive.

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Just Drag and Drop the files/apps you wish to save to a folder on your HD, format the Flash Drive, then drag and drop your files/apps back to the Flash Drive.

Hi, Ted,

Thanks for your post.

Yes, I would temporarily copy everything to the HDD that way, but with 1.7GB to copy, it will just take a bit of time to complete. However, my main concern now is how to prevent this same problem from happening in the future. This is my master “portable apps and utilities” flash drive on which I load new portable programs and updates, then copy the whole drive to other flash drives which I take with me when traveling. Consequently, I need to keep this master copy backed up on my HDD, just in case, but I’d like not to have to go through this whole exercise – just to avoid this annoying popup – every time I back it up to the HDD. Any thoughts on how to avoid recreating this popup problem when backing up this flash drive would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Al

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I would definitely use at least 2 flash drives for this. Flash drives can be notoriously unpredictable and can fail without warning.

Did you use the Right Click on the Flash Drive icon in the Taskbar and select Remove this device(not sure of exact wording) drive option before pulling it out?

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I would definitely use at least 2 flash drives for this. Flash drives can be notoriously unpredictable and can fail without warning.

Did you use the Right Click on the Flash Drive icon in the Taskbar and select Remove this device(not sure of exact wording) drive option before pulling it out?

I agree that flash drives can fail all too easily, which is why I backup my 1.7GB of portable apps and utilities to an image file on my HDD, then not only backup my HDD regularly, but also use that image file to copy (“Restore”) my portable apps and utilities to two other identical 4GB flash drives. That way, I can take two of the flash drives with me when I travel, just in case one should fail, while leaving my master copy at home for safekeeping. Yes, it takes time to keep it all up-to-date, but having had two HDDs freeze and die on me within the last two years (one less than a year old), I’m a staunch advocate, as you are, of “BACKUP…BACKUP…BACKUP.”

To answer your question, yes, I always click on the “Safely Remove Hardware” (SRH) icon before removing flash drives or other USB drives, even when it’s a royal pain. My W7 desktop usually lets flash drives go without complaint, but generally refuses to let my 1TB backup USB HDD go, popping up a window that says it’s still in use. I’ve never been able to find a way to get the SRH function to release my 1TB HDD promptly, even though SRH releases it promptly on other machines, so I reluctantly have to close everything and shut down the computer to remove the HDD safely. Whatever the cause may be of the flash drive message I’ve been getting, I’m pretty sure it’s not related to the SRH function.

Cheers,
Al

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I agree that flash drives can fail all too easily, which is why I backup my 1.7GB of portable apps and utilities to an image file on my HDD, then not only backup my HDD regularly, but also use that image file to copy (“Restore”) my portable apps and utilities to two other identical 4GB flash drives. That way, I can take two of the flash drives with me when I travel, just in case one should fail, while leaving my master copy at home for safekeeping. Yes, it takes time to keep it all up-to-date, but having had two HDDs freeze and die on me within the last two years (one less than a year old), I’m a staunch advocate, as you are, of “BACKUP…BACKUP…BACKUP.”

To answer your question, yes, I always click on the “Safely Remove Hardware” (SRH) icon before removing flash drives or other USB drives, even when it’s a royal pain. My W7 desktop usually lets flash drives go without complaint, but generally refuses to let my 1TB backup USB HDD go, popping up a window that says it’s still in use. I’ve never been able to find a way to get the SRH function to release my 1TB HDD promptly, even though SRH releases it promptly on other machines, so I reluctantly have to close everything and shut down the computer to remove the HDD safely. Whatever the cause may be of the flash drive message I’ve been getting, I’m pretty sure it’s not related to the SRH function.

Cheers,
Al

If you open ‘My Computer’ and right click on the drive you could try ‘eject’ from there. It always works for me when the tray icon fails

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If you open ‘My Computer’ and right click on the drive you could try ‘eject’ from there. It always works for me when the tray icon fails

Hi, Clive,

Thanks for your post. Yes, I’ve been able to use that technique to remove a USB flash drive when the Safely Remove Hardware icon gets surly and won’t let it go, but unfortunately that doesn’t work for my 1TB USB HDD, as there is no “Eject” option shown when I right-click on the USB HDD in “My Computer.”

Cheers,
Al

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Hi, Clive,

Thanks for your post. Yes, I’ve been able to use that technique to remove a USB flash drive when the Safely Remove Hardware icon gets surly and won’t let it go, but unfortunately that doesn’t work for my 1TB USB HDD, as there is no “Eject” option shown when I right-click on the USB HDD in “My Computer.”

Cheers,
Al

Look for the little USB icon in the system tray, click it and point to Eject .
Actually, Windows disables write caching for USB drives (unlike the Mac), so you shouldn’t need to dismount it first so long as you are careful not to remove it when saving/copying to the drive. I do, though, just as ‘best practice’, but failing to do so is unlikely to be the cause of your problem.

Before you do mad reformatting etc, just look for any .zip files and move them off the drive. If the message then goes away when you plug the drive back in, it is because at least one of the zip files is part of a multi-part archive. I suspect the message is the result of Windows’ trying to auto-run. Perhaps you can turn that off to stop the annoying message.

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Regarding your 1TB drive not being let go… check and see if Windows is indexing the drive – that will hold it up. You can diable indexing of the drive.

The popup may relate to a .ZIP file; PK/WinZip wold span floppy disks when the .ZIP was too big to fit, and this is how it figured out how many .ZIP files it had to unzip. Do you have .ZIP files on your flash drive?

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