Windows Defender stopping me from ejecting harddrive

Anonymous
2020-05-26T06:39:44+00:00

After uninstalling Norton (as it came preinstalled after on my computer) I started to experience an issue, whenever I would try to eject my hard drive I would get an error, after looking in event viewer I saw an error talking about how msmpeng.exe was stopping it from ejecting. After researching I found out that this task was windows defender.

However I have tried everything to stop this from happening to no avail, Ive gone into its settings to turn it off and yet it still runs in the background still blocking be from ejecting my hard drive, attempting to close msmpeng.exe in task manager gives me an error that I dont have permission (with no way to change this) I have then followed guides about going into edit to make a file called disablelivespywareprotection (something like that) and now Im out of answers, Am I now forced to just unplug it unsafely or something? please help

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-04-15T20:21:45+00:00

    @stumit, 

    Here is a sample of another application that prevents the ejection of the external drive.

    It is a utility called Retrospect, in this case you can just wait till it completes its scan or kill it in Task manager and the issue the eject again.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-04-15T15:04:34+00:00

    No it does not add the drive. It is quite simple. It does nothing. I understand how to do it perfectly fine, windows does nothing when I do what you said to do. Will not allow me to add the drive.

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-04-15T13:21:18+00:00

    Came here with the same problem on 19042.928.

    Most of the other suggestions are destructive or will leave you dangerously undefended.

    I set for better performance and the eject button works fine.

    Flushing only took a few seconds and I had just overwritten ~20G.

    The EJECTING_GET_OFF_THIS_DRIVE message is not getting to Defender if the drive is set to quick eject.

    Maybe Defender is not listening in that case, which would seem reasonable - it's a readonly process.

    If the drive is on laptop power, the performance setting is safe if you use eject.

    BTW, in 19042.928, there is no safe to remove dialog. The drive symbol just disappears from the tray.

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  4. Anonymous
    2020-11-27T10:15:47+00:00

    I will try again but it would not add anything last time no matter what I tried.

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  5. Anonymous
    2020-11-12T04:03:51+00:00

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