Windows 10 Pro 64bit 14393.726
Drive: USB 3.0 Western Digital Passport Drive (can reinstall Western Digital Utiltys if it matters
Fast Boot Disabled currently, ironically Taskbar icons load up faster with Fast boot off, go figure lol
Symptoms
Clean install of Avast 2017 17.1.3394.30, microupdated to .42 yesterday, since then cannot eject my USB 3.0 Passport Drive without restarting system first, seems that Avast for some reason has it locked, even tried ejecting safely with everything closed still won’t, disabled all Avast shield for 10 minutes, no luck.
Sysinternals’ Process Explorer shows that Avast’s ASWIDSAGENT.EXE is holding open two files on the USB stick which is what’s keeping the USB stick from being ejected.
BUT! I have specifically excluded these files from scanning by Avast:
(1) Behavior Shield - Both files excluded and also excluded the path to them.
(2) General Exclusions - Path to the two files excluded.
After making these exclusions I rebooted. I can then remove the USB stick as long as I don’t access either of those two files.
Once I access either file, then, despite the exclusions, ASWIDSAGENT.EXE locks them open and I can no longer remove the USB stick.
Even after the programs are closed ASWIDSAGENT.EXE doesn’t end it’s access to them.
As OP said - stopping all Avast shields doesn’t allow the USB stick to be removed.
Why not simply pull the stick out ?
That is one of the reasons Philips invented USB, so you can pull it out/insert it without having to disable anything or power off.
When I periodically go use my sister’s High Speed Internet with her Windows 10, I too more often than not encounter this situation of it supposedly not being safe to eject my Flash Drive yet even with all USB apps closed. A Right Click Eject won’t work either.
The thing is, it never occurred to me that the culprit could be avast. I just automatically figured it was Windows 10. I wind up having to reluctantly do as Eddy mentions — just pull the Flash Drive out. Only once did I encounter a problem by doing that. On that one occasion the laptop then suddenly kept throwing some .dll error that wouldn’t go away no matter what until I rebooted. Whew! I thought I had screwed up my sister’s laptop.
Just to clarify, in contrast to the OP’s Patrick2’s problem whereby he’s using a USB 3.0 Drive … in my case I am using a SanDisk Cruzer Flash Drive that is touted / advertised as being 2.0 / 3.0 compatible.
Well, don’t want to hijack the thread. Hopefully if it IS an avast problem, it gets fixed here in the very near future.