Tabs and USB discs

[quosek]

Hello
There is a problem while using tabs and removable discs.
After connecting USB device and working on it (copy, delete, move) when I close all tabs showing removable disc (I leave open only these referring to other discs/partitions) and want to "safe remove" disc (windows feature) I get info that something is still using this device.
And sadly it's TC still using the device (maybe there is somewhere not released file descriptor while closing tab ?)
It would be great improvement to repair this problem - now I have to close TC to remove USB discs and it's not good solution.

[karlchen]

Hello, quosek.

Cannot really confirm this to be an issue caused by Total Commander. I rarely get the message that the USB device cannot be removed. If I do the problem is usually caused by the resident antivirus scanner which has not finished scanning a file or several files on the USB device.

As a rule I work around this problem by closing the tab inside T.C. and waiting a few seconds before selecting to safely remove the USB device. These few seconds seem to be enough for the resident AV scanner to terminate its work most of the time.

Kind regards,
Karl

[roentgen]

2quosek
What operating system? Here on Vista I've seen that more than a lot. And for my mental health: no AV whatsoever

[dott]

I can confirm this too, on Vista.

[quosek]

WindowsXP
It's not AV - I've tried to find out which program is causing the trouble and I disabled almost everything.
I've disabled AV and killed almost every process and still - only after closing TC it worked.
And it's not few secs - I've closed all tabs referring to removable drive and waited about 1 min and nothing.
Maybe small hint - I'm not using "pen drive" but 3,5 inch removable 160gb drive with 5 30gb partitions

[ghisler(Author)]

Sorry, cannot confirm. TC itself does not lock any drives which aren't displayed in one of the panels.

It's possible that you have installed a plugin or Explorer extension which has a file opened on that drive, e.g. when extracting an icon or so. There is nothing which I can do in such a case, you will have to close and restart TC.

[sqa_wizard]

2quosek: Just download Unlocker.

From the context menu of the locked drive choose "Unlocker" who shows you all processes locking this drive.
This will give you a hint about the culprit at least (you may force an unlock this way too)

[ghisler(Author)]

Unfortunately that will show only the process, but not what dll (plugins are dlls) or shell extensions are locking the file...

[ZoSTeR]

ProcessActivityViewer from Nirsoft is able to show the module / DLL that opens a file. To find a file thats still open just compare the "Open Count" and "Close Count".

In combination with OpenedFilesView you should be able to find the cause for the lock.

[ghisler(Author)]

Thanks for the hint! Did anyone with this problem try the Nirsoft tool?

[karlchen]

Hello, Christian.

I can confirm that
+ on Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit
+ using a USB stick (not a USB drive as the thread starter)
+ using Total Commander v7.03 (1st occurrence)
+ using Total Commander v7.04a (2nd occurrence)
I have experienced the reported problem at minimum twice. This is what the Windows eventlog will confirm.

Here is the name of the programme which the eventlog blamed for being the culprit: conime.exe.

Source: Kernel-PnP
Event ID: 225
Die Anwendung \Device\HarddiskVolume1\Windows\System32\conime.exe mit der Prozess-ID 3616 hat das Entfernen/Auswerfen für das Gerät USB\VID_0EA0&PID_2168\5&16a81628&0&1 verweigert.

(Sorry, my Vista speaks German. Yet this is what it complains about: The application conime.exe process ID 3616 has prevented the USB device from being unloaded.)

The USB device in this case was my USB stick. But I am sure I am now able to reproduce the same error using any removable USB storage device (stick, HDD, SD-card) at will.

• Make sure conime.exe has not been launched already.
• Change to a folder on the USB device inside T.C. Press Shift+F10 and select "Open a command prompt here!".
• Close T.C. Close cmd.exe.
• You will not be able to unload the USB device.

Reason:
conime.exe is still alive. And the working folder of conime.exe points where to? Guess! => Right. To the folder on the USB device.
Kill conime.exe and unload the USB device.

Can you, Christian, or anybody else reproduce this?
(Or am I just over-generalizing something which has happened here twice according to my eventlogs?)

Kind regards,
Karl
--
P.S.:
And for my mental health, the resident antivirus programme is switched on all the time and it is totally innocent in this case.

[petermad]

Here is the name of the programme which the eventlog blamed for being the culprit: conime.exe.

Seems to be a know bug in Windows:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1097952&SiteID=1&mode=1

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/903204/en-us

[karlchen]

Good night, Peter.

Great. Thanks for searching faster than I could.
(In fact, I had not even started, instead visited another forum in the meantime.)

The first article seems to describe the situation perfectly. conime.exe will be launched once the first console application is launched. It will not exit again before Windows shuts down.

Of course, conime.exe - like any process - will have a startup folder. If this folder happens to be a folder located on a removable device, like a USB HDD or a USB stick, then conime.exe will make sure that Windows will not release this device.

Kind regards,
Karl

[ghisler(Author)]

I see - unfortunately I have to launch the console with the current dir, because that's where the user wants to work - if I start it e.g. with c:\, then it will show c:\ as the current dir of the command line.

[karlchen]

Hi, Christian.

I think you may have misunderstood something here:

At the beginning of this thread, it was assumed that T.C. itself locked the USB device. (No console application involved or mentioned.)

As far as I can tell, neither on WinXP, nor on Vista, T.C. will keep a lock on the USB device unless it is using it.

But:
As soon as a console application is launched for the first time after Windows Vista has come up, it will launch conime.exe.
The starter of this console application may be T.C. or any other programme or the Start => Accessories => Command Prompt shortcut, it does not matter.
If the startup folder of the first console application is a folder on the USB device, conime.exe will use this folder as its startup folder as well. And conime.exe will not exit before you shutdown Windows.

So T.C. has only got a chance of triggering this conime.exe problem in case T.C. is the first one to launch a console application after Vista has started up.

The problem is basically caused by conime.exe's behaviour. It simply should default to using %windir% as its startup folder.

Kind regards,
Karl