Removable drives locked by XYplorer

[admin]

I found out that the 6th handle is not related to Auto-Refresh at all but to "Auto-complete path/file names"! If you uncheck "Auto-complete path/file names" (Configuration/General), then you should see only 5 handles no matter what you do. Can you confirm this?

[TheQwerty]

Ah ha! That seems to be the culprit.

I haven't been able to get more than five handles with Auto-Complete path/file names turned off and the locking works just as I would expect now.

Any idea if this is something that can easily be fixed or is it just an unfortunate side-effect of using that feature?

[admin]

Any idea if this is something that can easily be fixed or is it just an unfortunate side-effect of using that feature?

It's weird. A path gets locked already when you just select it by Auto-Complete! You don't even have to go there. However, turning off Auto-Complete does not remove the lock. So it looks like an internal bug to me that might be impossible to fix. Research brought up nothing.

Luckily it only seems to affect whole drives, i.e. the 6th handle always points to the root directory. So the locking hurts only with removable drives. Consequently the workaround would be: don't use Addressbar/Goto with Auto-Complete on removable drives, or use Addressbar/Goto with Auto-Complete again to go away from the removable drive to unlock it.

[TheQwerty]

It's weird.

You can say that again!

A path gets locked already when you just select it by Auto-Complete! You don't even have to go there. However, turning off Auto-Complete does not remove the lock.

It will also remove the lock if you just select a path on a different drive via Auto-Complete.

So it looks like an internal bug to me that might be impossible to fix. Research brought up nothing.

indeed. At least we've kind of figured out what's causing it and how to prevent/remove the lock. Now to just train myself to do those things automatically and I should never notice this again.

Thanks!

[TheQwerty]

I recently found myself in a situation where I needed to do a lot of testing with a USB stick and this ended up requiring a lot of stick swapping between machines.

As my primary method of navigation within XY is via the address bar & auto-complete this damn 6th locking handle that the shell creates on the root was really getting on my nerves. (Until I had a small break and wrote a UDC to do it all so I never needed to look at the USB stick again.)

For some time now, I've known that to unlock the drive all you have to do is trick the auto-complete into listing a different drive. Which got me wondering is there any way you could do this automagically behind the curtains to save me the trouble?

[j_c_hallgren]

TheQwerty, not saying this is an answer but just a thought: One other shareware product that I have found useful in this type of USB issue is http://safelyremove.com/ as it has some features above and beyond what the OS provides.

[TheQwerty]

TheQwerty, not saying this is an answer but just a thought: One other shareware product that I have found useful in this type of USB issue is http://safelyremove.com/ as it has some features above and beyond what the OS provides.

Yep, I use that, but as you said it's not the answer.

It gives me the option to forcefully stop the drive, but there isn't a need to do that as just sending auto-complete off to another drive unlocks the handle discussed here.

[admin]

I recently found myself in a situation where I needed to do a lot of testing with a USB stick and this ended up requiring a lot of stick swapping between machines.

As my primary method of navigation within XY is via the address bar & auto-complete this damn 6th locking handle that the shell creates on the root was really getting on my nerves. (Until I had a small break and wrote a UDC to do it all so I never needed to look at the USB stick again.)

For some time now, I've known that to unlock the drive all you have to do is trick the auto-complete into listing a different drive. Which got me wondering is there any way you could do this automagically behind the curtains to save me the trouble?

I don't know such a trick. Apart from rolling my own auto-complete.

[TheQwerty]

I don't know such a trick.

Drats!

Apart from rolling my own auto-complete.

I dream of the day this happens, and the MRU and auto-complete become a single list that can be correctly navigated by (shift+)tab. It will be quite the glorious day indeed!

[hulland]

I use " USB Safely remove" it allows you to remove USB sticks anyway, more or less at any time/place-- it also gives an option to hide any slots not used ( eg in a card reader)