craiggunhouse

Join Date 05/2025

Why is ObjectDock locking my External Drives

Why is ObjectDock locking my External USB Drives? There are no references to "A:" or any of the other drive letters of my external drives.

Craig

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Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. I am not familiar with "File Locksmith". But, is it actually locked? You can't get to your external drive when ObjectDock is running? And, once you exited ObjectDock the external drive appear?

Thank you,
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

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File Locksmith is part of the Microsoft PowerToys utility.

The drive is not locked in the sense that it can't be used; rather, it can't be ejected, and ObjectDock is the reason. I have noticed from previous forum threads that this has been a problem since 2006.

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I tried on my Windows 10 system. But I can eject my usb drive without issue while ObjectDock is running. Any specific steps I need to take so I can reproduce your issue on my system?

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

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I am using Windows 11. I placed a video of me trying to eject one of my USB drives (this occurs on all of my USB drives).

Craig

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1830

My system has been active since January 2015... an uptime of over 10 years. It has always had ObjectDock installed and there has never been an issue with drives not ejecting.

Currently there are 11 physical Hard drives. 2 are USB, 6 are hotswap SSD. The only ones that do not 'eject' are internal M.2, 1 of which is the OS anyway...

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I found the problem; the recycle bin needs to be removed.

https://forums.stardock.com/154536/objectdock-wont-let-me-safely-remove-hardware

Craig

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Thank you for your video. Great find, appreciate your reporting back. . But, I rechecked, I do have recycle bin on one of my dock. Yet, I don't have issue with it. Perhaps, it has something in it linked to your ejecting drive.

Thank you,

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1830

Quoting craiggunhouse,

reply 6

I found the problem; the recycle bin needs to be removed.

Yes, mine too has a recycle bin, but no issue.

Sounds like something you delete from a removable drive isn't releasing its link to the drive when you attempt to eject. If you empty the recycle prior to eject then nothing can interfere, though I don't recall ever having to.

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Yeah, I removed the Recycle Bin and the problem went away.

Norton 360? I don't know if anti-virus software alters the recycling bin, and is causing ObjectDock to act differently. Anti-virus software has been known to cause issues.

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1830

Quoting craiggunhouse,

reply 9

Norton 360? I don't know if anti-virus software alters the recycling bin, and is causing ObjectDock to act differently. Anti-virus software has been known to cause issues.

If any AV was going to cause issues it would be Norton.

I dumped them almost 20 years ago, still with about 6 months of sub... simply because they were incompetent.

I moved on to Bitdefender...all good until they were too slow to be compatible with Win 7, so moved on yet again to Kaspersky and have stayed there ever since [probably over 15 years]...

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