How to remove Virtual Box and Windows XP?

How can i properly remove eject usb flash drive in OS windows xp professional sp3?

• i have a wide variety of usb devices external to my dell xps 400 dimension 8150 build that will not properly shut down in order to be able to remove the devices so that it does not create a blue screen error. for instance, one of sandisk's usb flash drives, the old U3, cannot be safely ejected from the usb drive of my system. microsoft tells us it has been working on this fix since june 2008. not good. maybe old bill will perform one of his charitable acts by telling us how to do this in windows xp, which ms has determined it will not support in not too far into the future. we have so many windows XP users! (it WAS the best ms operating system and probably still is). but onward: if i choose to "safely remove hardware" down in the system tray, xp tells me that services to this [usb flash] DRIVE cannot be stopped now and to try again later. well, it's been a journey, first trying again later by 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 and 36 hours (oops, sorry, i forgot to attach my usb stopwatch, so i can't tell you PRECISE number of hours, boo hoo!) since i tried this and still i get the same error. this same error has reared its ugly little blackhead when i'm trying to disengage one of my external hard drives that cost me mega bucks $$$ after windows live dropped a TH on me that took a year to fix (my entire LAN). so, i might blow up one of my backup or mirror imaging EHDs by not ejecting it properly (stopping services to it, just like i say above about the flash drive), which then means--of course--that the data that i so lovingly stored on it will be lost. i.e., it is like crashing your hard drive. what a conundrum! it goes in circles: you buy all these usb backup devices--and other devices, for instance, an android cell phone, that store pictures, movies, and music on them--but just TRY to safely remove them when you may be using more than one (because your system's power is great enough to do so). then you will get the dreaded BLUE SCREEN ERROR! it indicates a problem with hardware/driver updates, yet, you go to the vendor's site and see that you have updated your device drivers already, so what to do next? send microsoft a blue screen error report. does this do any good? NO! because... windows xp will not be supported by the PC giant, microsoft, soon. and so: anyone out there who uses usb devices a lot running windows xp (in my case, the professional OS version) with SP3 know how to perform this wee little task in the correct manner? thank you, fellow geeks!

• Answer:

  Long time no hear...Hi. Another thing to check is that you have no ative processes, such as word or MS Windows Explorer looking at aything in your flash drive. If you have an open document, or you are displaying the contents of the drive it cannot be stopped. If it still won't stop, try hibernating your computer and then remove the drive, and then un-hibernate - this is quicker than rebooting and may be a work-around.