August 24, 2021 at 10:56 pm

2385752

Greetings! I have a experienced a new error message – and I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this as well. Recently – Upon unplugging my Android phone from the PC .. I get an error message “The Device has either stopped responding or has been disconnected” (see photo attached). This has happened recently – on a few different days – after I have transferred documents or images from my cellphone to the PC. And it’s not just one error message popup – if I click the “OK” or the “X” in top right corner to close the message – about another 19 of these images are remaining that I have to click shut. I have found the only way to stop the messages is to restart the PC. Does anyone know what causes this error message? From where in the operating system is it coming? I did a hardware scan using the Dell SupportAssist – everything seems to be fine. I checked device manager and I see that the Android’s USB’s Universal Serial Bus Controller doesn’t have a yellow triangle – I checked for the latest update for the device driver – it’s current. I ran a – sfc/scannow – in command prompt – no integrity violations I have checked the cable I use to connect the phone to the PC – swapped it out and it’s not the cable. I tried plugging in the phone into a different USB slot … it’s not the USB slot I usually use. I was wondering what could be the problem with my PC?

• Phil F AskWoody Plus I’m wondering if you’re ending your phone-to-PC transfer in an orderly fashion. Before unplugging the USB cable, are you going to the Android USB Preferences setting on your phone to select No data transfer, thereby telling your PC that the transfer is done? HTH

  1 user thanked author for this post.  

• * ![](https://https://i0.wp.com/secure.gravatar.com/avatar/202d2f1dc657f761f8a1f1a5eef53aeb?s=96&d=mm&r=g)Linda2019 AskWoody Plus I didn’t use an app – I copied and pasted to my PC.

AskWoody Plus I looked to see if the PC still felt it had a connection to the phone – I checked to see if there is a “safely remove hardware Icon” presented – there is none. I copied and pasted the files. I didn’t use an app. I tried using Bluetooth last night to transfer some documents – no issue using Bluetooth.

• * PKCano

       Manager  
       The drive won’t show up unless the phone is connected.  
       If you copy/pasted, you did so from somewhere – a drive letter in File Explorer.  
       There should be a USB icon in the right hand taskbar system tray when the phone is connected – it may be under the hidden “^”  
       You disconnect the phone the same way you disconnect a USB drive by clicking on that icon and choosing “Eject.”  
       OR  
       In File Explorer, right click on the drive letter that represents the phone (the one you copied from, not C:), and select “Eject.”  
  

  • * Linda2019

                  AskWoody Plus  
                  Your post prompted me to think about what could be running or how can the phone still be attached and then I tried different copy and paste motions and then when I copy and pasted to OneDrive – is when I received the error message.  
    

    • anonymous

                    Guest  
                    I agree that there should be an option to “eject” an Android phone from the computer. However, Windows 10 does not seem to offer that. I read and followed all of the recommendations here. I also cannot find a drive letter associated with the device.  
                    I am using a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G, connected to the computer via USB type C. It works just fine while connected. Files transfer in either direction. I just get this constant and irritating error message whenever I disconnect my phone from the computer.  
                    Any more ideas?  

    • * ![](https://https://i0.wp.com/secure.gravatar.com/avatar/075ee3cf68f01ca9ccff8aeeb03b82cf?s=100&d=mm&r=g)Frank Guest I experience this same behavior with my Galaxy S21 5G phone and Windows 10\. The OS thinks the phone is in charge of the connection. Even if I go to the phone and tell it that I want to disconnect, Windows still pops up those dialogs.
• ![](https://https://i0.wp.com/secure.gravatar.com/avatar/744f6cad222ec71ba70680009c609c0a?s=96&d=mm&r=g)GoneToPlaid AskWoody Lounger My Samsung Galaxy 4 phone does not cause Windows to show a “Safe to remove hardware” icon for it when it is connected to my computer.

I started getting this same error with my iPhone after updating the Phone app (which I don’t even use, but it runs in the background) from the Microsoft Store (could be coincidental).

What Microsoft iPhone app and for what purpose ?

brian1248

AskWoody Lounger

ScotchJohn

AskWoody Lounger What Microsoft iPhone app and for what purpose ? How did we get from Linda’s Android phone to an iPhone? As someone observed on another thread, “apples and oranges”. Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 [email protected] GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

brian1248

AskWoody Lounger The same problem is occurring with both devices; they are both phones that connect to the PC via the USB. I thought it would be useful to indicate that the problem is not unique to android phones.

anonymous

Guest 2 users thanked author for this post.

oldguy

AskWoody Lounger This is a sideways slant on the issue based on a Windows 98 issue, but as Microsoft have been rearranging their printing a lot in recent weeks.. might be worth a shot.. no matter what device/phone/gadget you plug in.. You don’t have a MFC (scan and print using SD card) printer do you? (the one I had was an Epson, but I doubt that matters.) The problem was the result of a file system on another unrelated device being attached which the “media insertion” detection part of the driver for the printer already installed couldn’t correctly resolve, and thus the printer driver was causing the message, as that became unresponsive when the problem device was connected.. (as it was expecting the “drive” to be a SD card (FAT32 I guess) in a card reader, not an ancient no brand MP3 player which for some reason was FAT formatted by its software and caused the problem when plugged in.) Perhaps unplug any other devices, reboot (so their drivers don’t start) and see if the problem goes away? The “10 times” could simply be the result of the number of times that the failing service supporting the driver is set to try restarting. 1 user thanked author for this post.

Phil F

AskWoody Plus Update from my post 2385970 above: Today I copied some photos from my wife’s Moto G7. On turning off Data transfer mode, I got the error message. I then tried my Pixel 3a and browsed some files, turned off data transfer and got the error message. In each case a single error message. The day after my earlier tests, the 2021-08 cumulative update KB5005033 installed on my system (Win 10 Home X64 21H1). Regards, Phil 1 user thanked author for this post.

GoneToPlaid

AskWoody Lounger It seems like the CU is the cause of the issue.

Linda2019

AskWoody Plus I was hoping that .. it wasn’t due to updates. My problems started 2 weeks after I updated Windows in early August. I did have a couple of DELL updates about a week after the Windows Updates. The error messages started after the DELL updates. I wouldn’t even know where to start with fixing this type of problem.

Linda2019

AskWoody Plus Well, I have sort of narrowed down the problem .. the error message pops up when I copy and paste to OneDrive. Even though the file is copied over and the icon next to the folder is a solid green check mark .. no processing of changes messages from icon tray … some how it must still be syncing. I have copied and pasted only to the PC and unplugged the phone from the PC … no error messages. The error messages happen when I copy the file to OneDrive or OneDrive in addition to the PC. Workaround – I will copy just to the Documents folder and then separately copy it from there to the OneDrive Folder. But, it would be nice to be rid of the problem

anonymous

Guest I am having the same problem on my Dell laptop. The error message keeps coming up despite not having my android phone connected for days. I get 10 or more error boxes randomly appearing while using my computer. I wonder if it’s a Dell update problem. When I disconnect my phone from my laptop, there never has been an icon in the ‘safely remove hardware’ spot for it, which I use for other devices, such as SD cards, external hard drive etc. I hope Dell produces a fix soon, if that is the problem. I have a small USB C port, which I need converters for.

anonymous

Guest I also encounter this problem whenever I disconnect my android phone or my Nikon digital compact camera. It’s very annoying to say the least.

zat_so

AskWoody Plus Linda2019, Since you’ve isolated the problem as being related to OneDrive, you may want to read Fred Langa’s series on the ins and outs of OneDrive configuration and use in the AskWoody newsletter from earlier this year (assuming you haven’t already, of course). He goes rather in-depth and you may find the answer in there. 1 user thanked author for this post.

anonymous

Guest The problem isn’t specific to Dell PCs. I have a home built desktop computer. And NO you can’t “eject” a smart phone from File Explorer. Reboot has been my only solution so far. Definitely a new problem not seen before 2 months ago.

Linda2019

AskWoody Plus Same here – only a problem in the last few months – after the August updates – the only advice that works is to:

1. use Bluetooth to transfer files
2. if using a cable – copy and paste into an existing folder in your PC – do not sync to the cloud – put it in your folder and then , later copy it to your cloud files
3. a new item – I used to be able to open the files on the phone and print from them and not have the strange disconnect message – but now I do – so now .. to work around that I have to copy the file to an existing folder to look at the photo or document It might be solved correcting something in the registry – but I have done sfc /scannow, ckdsk, etc – nothing *appears\ to be an error in the registry…but I bet something is off.

   My inability to burn DVDs happened after an update as well – did all of the protocol like scanning for errors, and in examining the registry the NoCDBurning value was 0 – not 1 – so I still should have been able to burn a DVD. Dell Tech Support was useless – paid all that money for nothing. I find a Dell article about that topic and followed the instructions in the article to delete those keys within the registry and now I can burn DVDs. So… there was no real error – 0 is a valid value – … but something just wasn’t right. I bet its something similar plaguing our phones relationship with our computers. We just need to find an article or tutorial that actually addresses it.

   anonymous

   Guest It’s definitely not specific to OneDrive or Dell – I have had the issue for a couple of weeks now with two Windows 10 Pro computers; my laptop at work, and my PC at home. The device is a Huawei P20 Pro – this has not received any updates in recent months that might cause it. I’ve also cleaned the contacts of the USB C connector, and there are no issues while connected (data transfer is fine, USB C headphone adapters work fine). It occurs with USB2.0, USB3.0, 3.2g1 and 3.2g2 (A & C). I’ve used at least six different cables. Neither computer has OneDrive installed, nor are they Dells (home PC is a personally-built gaming PC built around a Ryzen 5800x/Asus Prime X570 Pro, work laptop is an HP). Both run Windows 10 Pro (home 21H1, work 2004). Home updates frequently. Work last updated 14/09/21 (Updates are paused until we find it convenient to update). Latest update was KB5005565. Prior to this, I could simply unplug my phone with only the disconnected sound playing – no issues whatsoever. Now, however, I will get 1-10 popups when disconnecting (there’s no option to eject the device anywhere) after accessing the device (even browsing files in explorer is enough, file transfer is not required to trigger it). Restarting the PC, or using Task manager to restart Windows Explorer, will temporarily stop the issue.

   anonymous

   Guest As an addition to this – I had an update through the Microsoft Store yesterday for the Your Phone app (home PC, and I believe the app was dated 12/10). Immediately after it downloaded and installed, I received the device not responding/disconnected error but have yet to receive it again. I checked for updates on MS Store on the work laptop, and Your Phone was last updated 12/10 – I haven’t seen the issue occur today.

   Linda2019

   AskWoody Plus Please read my response to Anonymous post above from 10-1-21 – maybe it can help.

   anonymous

   Guest I’m having this same problem after transferring some files via USB from a Galaxy S10 to a Windows 10 PC. I’ve had this phone for a while, but the problem only started in the last several months. I get one popup window for every time the phone has been disconnected since my last reboot, so if I don’t fully reboot for a while, the popups can stack up (a dozen at a time!). The popups always appear all at once. Thanks to Paul T for his post on August 27, 2021 suggesting that we (install and) fire up Process Explorer to identify the culprit. (The “target” icon is the cross-hair thing on the right, and it works like a champ.) Turns out the culprit is Microsoft Edge, which Microsoft DOES keep reinstalling on my machine, over my objections. Simple solution to this problem may be to uninstall Microsoft Edge.

   anonymous

   Guest

   anonymous

   Guest This did the trick. Had to read the entire thread to the end to find this. Thanks. I hate it when people always first thing suggest to use a different cable.

   PKCano

   Manager Before you think you are going to get rid of Edge, read this , the section about removing it and especially the 9/14/2021 “Update.”. If you use the method linked to tomsguide above, the next time you use Windows Update, the update will fail with an error code 0x800f0922. You can no longer remove Edge – it will reinstall with every monthly update. You CAN use the Edge Deflector App to ease the pain.

   anonymous

   Guest I removed Edge using the guide linked above but I’m still getting the same issue every time I connect my Samsung Note 20. I just built my PC so I was wondering if there was something wrong with my particular computer but after seeing how many people have the same issue I don’t know what to think. It’s very annoying because every time I want to transfer and photos or videos from my phone to my computer, the Photos app on my computer says the file is either “corrupted to incompatible.” I was contemplating whether I should update to Windows 11 to see if that somehow fixes it.

   anonymous

   Guest I have had this problem for a few months with both a Home built PC running Win10 Pro with the error mentioning my Android Phone and a Work Computer (Surface Book 2) with Win10 Pro with the error mentioning my work phone (an Apple Iphone) I do not have Onedrive installed on either pc. I have and use MS Edge and it is required because of my work. I tried to uninstall the Your Phone app but it is not allowed through the add/remove. -Jeff

   anonymous

   Guest It happened after the last Windows update. It is an issue with the Shell Infrastructure Host. That is what is causing the errors. Microsoft currently has no fix. I saw this fix by a user on Reddit. Edit: Hey u/PureSilverFox the issue stopped for me after reinstalling “HID-compliant consumer device” in Device Manger. Right click on those devices (I had two), Properties, Update Driver, Browse Computer, Let me pick from a list, the select HID-compliant consumer control device. I am not sure if this a fix but you might try it. At least I couldn’t reproduce the issue since then.

   D0kk3n

   AskWoody Lounger This Windows fix worked for me. Settings – Bluetooth and Other Devices Removed the HID-Keyboard. I also removed my phone as a device. Unplugged my phone. Plugged it back up. Let it go through setting up the device. Fixed. I plugged it up and unplugged it several times. I think the issue was with the HID keyboard thing.

   D0kk3n

   AskWoody Lounger Well crap…..scratch that. I got to work this morning and I had the error 5 times.

   anonymous

   Guest I am suddenly having the same problem: I unplug my phone and instantly 42 messages “The device…ETC”… I have transferred files (Audio, Doc, video, images) the same way for years. I am doing nothing different. I transfer both to and from the phone to computer. I have several external drives on multiple hubs (I know your not advised to do so, but for what I’m doing, Ive never had any problems). My computer has never shown my phone listed anywhere in the “disconnect drive” list in the task bar though it shows the other external drives. The phone (android) shows up in explorer under in the “my PC” folder, with all of the other drives, and that’s where I’ve always accessed it. When I am done transferring files, seeing no “click to eject phone” or “click to disconnect” of any type ANY where, I just unplug the phone and off I go. I have changed nothing, except I DID update windows very recently… So I’m wondering if its something to do with that. Has anyone figured this out yet?

   Phil F

   AskWoody Plus I first saw this following the Windows 2021-08 cumulative update. Since I don’t transfer files from the phone frequently, I now test it after each month’s updates. It still occurs following the 2021-12 update. On the first occurrence, I saw just one message after each disconnect of 2 different phones. The following day, random repetitions began to appear, some of which appeared on a different machine in my home network that had not had any phone transfer activity! A restart of my machine calmed the weirdness, but any USB phone transfer will now generate one or a flurry of these messages, so I make a point of restarting after each phone transfer. Regards, Phil

   Alex5723

   AskWoody Plus My Samsung Galaxy 4 phone does not cause Windows to show a “Safe to remove hardware” icon for it when it is connected to my computer. I think that when connection your Android to Windows you get 2 options : Connect a phone, connect as USB storage. When connecting as USB storage you should have the option to ‘remove hardware’. https://www.tomsguide.com/us/use-android-phone-as-usb-drive,news-21246.html 1 user thanked author for this post.

   Linda2019

   AskWoody Plus I don’t see the option to “Press Stop on your Android phone to end the storage session before disconnecting the cable”. Do you see it on your phone?

   anonymous

   Guest Any solid solution to the original stated problem by “Linda” dating back to August 24, 2021? Same problem here, Windows 10 PC, and a Samsung 21 phone. Upon disconnecting the Samsung from the PC, about 20 messages pop up stating “This device has either stopped responding or has been disconnected” In my case, not limited to when disconnecting to “OneDrive” like Linda’s experience. And NO, it is not a (“switch your cable thing”), or find the (“disconnect the device safely thing option”, one is not provided). Any solid fix will be greatly appreciated. Zapper1 01-17-2022

   Linda2019

   AskWoody Plus Well – I have a new Android phone – a Samsung A32 5G and I did not experience any problems at first. Then one day – the issue came back again. I have tried to run the DISM RestoreHealth when that took place and it did correct the registry. Not sure if it is a recurring theme – hasn’t happened again since but .. if it does I will update this post.

   anonymous

   Guest UPDATED previous post. Well, for my situation, I followed the info provided by: DOKK3N on November 9, 2021 post:_ _ _where the suggestion was to remove the “HID Keyboard Device”. So I went into my PC’s device manager, then scrolled to “Keyboards”, then found “HID Keyboard Device”, right clicked that and “uninstall”. Then rebooted my PC, and the issued now seems to have vanished, problem solved for me. Upon research, when I rebooted, my PC reinstalled the “HID Keyboard Device”, but apparently updated it somehow or in some way to where now there is no problem or conflict and the original issued described by “Linda” at he origin of this post that I also experienced is no longer present. Thank you DOKK3N Much appreciated. Zapper1 01/17/2022 1 user thanked author for this post.

   anonymous

   Guest Rebooting “fixes”, so whatever changes you’re making before the reboot, don’t confuse correlation with causation. But the issue will return the next connect/disconnect. Wish I knew the answer, but the grasping at USB cables, OneDrive, Dell, and the like is nearly comical.

   Jim

   Guest Same issue as all were having… Uninstalled HID Keyboard Device as recommended… So far have not seen error message!

   anonymous

   Guest Experiencing the same issue. Multiple popups saying The device is either stopped responding or has been disconnected messages when unplugging my android device.

   Linda2019

   AskWoody Plus Have you tried to run a sfc /scannow or a DISM RestoreHealth command? That’s the direction I am taking – that there is a registry problem – not necessarily a phone problem. Reason being … I have a new Android and at first I had no problems unplugging the device but it did happen again. So I tried running a RestoreHealth command and it did fix something in the registry. But not sure if it’s a direct correlation to the problem.

   anonymous

   Guest THIS IS DEFINITELY A ONEDRIVE ISSUE, NOT A USB ISSUE. I am getting it on a new phone I have never connected to my laptop via USB but am syncing files across both devices with Onedrive.

   anonymous

   Guest I disagree, as I, and at least one other post I saw above, said they experienced this same thing when NOT using OneDrive.

   anonymous

   Guest I am having the same issue with my pc and iphone.

   anonymous

   Guest I am having the same issue with these popup errors after I transfer files from my iPhone X to my HP computer’s C: drive (so this does NOT appear to be a OneDrive problem nor a Dell problem as had been hypothesized earlier in the thread). I usually get about 3-5 popups, and if I do nothing, they just sit there on the screen, but if I try to close the windows, I will eventually get a few more. My phone does appear as a drive in Windows Explorer. I do not get the icon in my hidden task view icon list to allow me to “safely remove hardware”. I made a desktop shortcut for this function, and when I execute it, my phone doesn’t appear on the list. I am not given an option what to do when I connect the phone because it probably just does whatever I told it to do the first time so it remembers the device and just opens it as a drive. One thing I tried the last time was to close all copies of Windows Explorer I have open at the time I did the transfer, since I normally have several of those windows open all the time. When I did this, I didn’t get the popup error messages. But this was a very small sample size of one try, so maybe I can try this a few more times with both methods: leaving several windows explorers open, and closing them all, and see if this really solves the problem.

   Deano

   Guest My Samsung Galaxy S22 did the same thing, multiple messages “The device has either stopped…”. The solution for me was to go to USB settings on the device, select “Transferring files” for transferring files, then select “Charging phone only” before disconnecting it.

   Bob

   Guest I am having the same problem with my Galaxy 21s and my new Nikon Z9 camera after I unplug the cable. I only started getting these warnings in the past 4 to 6 months. 1 user thanked author for this post.

   Mark C

   Guest I’ve been using a Gigabyte motherboard based PC with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit for just over seven years now. I’ve never, ever had any issues with this problem when transferring a large flac lossless based audio library to my phone, (over 300 gig). This has never been an issue when transferring to a Moto G5, and more recently a Moto G7 Plus. When the flac library is updated on the PC, I’ll wipe the library that is written to my SD card on my phone. I’ll then copy the new library over. This usually takes about five hours. No problem. I’ll usually copy a new version of my music library just before I go to bed, and it’s all on my phone when I get up in the morning. After about four and a half years, my Moto G7 Plus died about six weeks ago, so upgraded to the newer Moto G82G5. BANG!!!! that’s when this hell of a problem reared it’s ugly head, and there is nothing I can do about it. In my case, I’ve discovered I’ve got about 45 to 50 minutes window to copy stuff to my phones SD card, then the transfer stops with this error. I’ll then have to delete the last album/compilation folder that was copied to the phone, reboot computer, then copy from where I’ve left off, until another 50 minutes later when this error reappears again, and again, and again. So what was once being able to copy a 450 gig flac library to my SD card overnight, is now something I have to do over a entire weekend, rebooting my PC about 14 times, just to get the content onto the SD card. As I explainted to the sales rep of the store where I bought it from, I tried a number of things to resolve the issue, including changing cables (three different cables, two of them only months old), tried different USB ports on my computer with no go. I even took the phone back to swap for another G82G5, thinking that the phone itself may have been faulty. I then replaced the SD card, thinking that that may have become corrupted, it was geting on to three years old, and had about four to five dozen write cycles. Computer is absolutely fine, as it copies to other devices like external hard drives and thumb drives without a problem. Often write large backups of about 3 to 4 TB to Seagate drives with no problem. Also explained to sales rep, that taking the SD card out to place into a card reader is not an option. I’m visually impaired, and find it impossible to navigate the mechanism on the phone that controls the SD Card / SIM slot. My fully sighted brother couldn’t even do it, let lone a almost blind man. So end of story is I’m stuck with this problem from hell, and now rather reluctant to update my music library on my phone. Maybe I thought it was a part of the inbuilt obsolescence, but I’ve seen on here that people with Win 10 are also having the same issue.

   b

   AskWoody_MVP

   Paul T

   AskWoody MVP

   n0ads

   AskWoody Lounger Installing Motorola Device Manager 2.5.4 would update your PC’s “Motorola USB drivers” to the latest version and might help. Another option would be to use Bluetooth to transfer the files to the phone.

   Alex5723

   AskWoody Plus Another option would be to use Bluetooth to transfer the files to the phone Why use the slow BT when users can use the speedy wi-fi ?

   Mike

   Guest Similar symptoms to many posters before. My wife’s Samsung S21, after unplugging from my laptop error pop up “The device has either stopped responding or has been disconnected”. Regardless of whether the OK button is pressed or the X to close the window is attempted, it is replaced by an identical error message window. For me, a reboot reliably eliminates the error messages. That solves it until the next time I unplug her phone from my laptop. Note that this problem does NOT always occur when unplugging. But often. When the error messages cannot be closed, if instead I plug her phone back in, then I can close the error message, and continue accessing the files on her phone as normal. Then, when removing the usb cable a second time, about half the time I can get away without any errors. Very inconsistent; I can’t figure out why it is not repeatable. Does not seem to matter how many Windows Explorer windows are open. I normally try to close all of them before unplugging, but that is not a reliable solution. On her Android, “Use USB for” it is set for “transferring files / Android Auto”. Same as with my phone, that does not seem to cause this issue. Cable is USB to USB C. I’ve swapped with other cables and have same issue recur. Laptop is Lenovo Thinkpad P52. Windows 11 This sequence has worked correctly for more than a year, but started this nonsense at least a month ago. Perhaps several months ago. No other USB peripherals attached. This is the sole used USB port utilized. It happens even if the phone is instead plugged into a different USB port. To answer other user suggestions, in Windows 11 I see no option to “remove hardware” or “eject” the S21. I see no option to “press stop on Android phone to end session”. I am not using OneDrive (at least not actively moving anything there while moving files from her phone to my C: drive.). I am not using Edge, with no active Edge windows open, but have not been able to permanently remove it. I’m still troubleshooting, but my guess is it is either a recent Android update (Dec 2023 System Update 42, G991usqs9fwl1 or a recent Windows 11 update (Win 11 Pro, 10.0.22621 Build 22621) that is causing my problem. I don’t know how to reconcile that with all the other folks having this issue as early as 2021. I welcome any suggestions, but for me, repeatedly reconnecting her phone will sometimes solve it. If not, I just reboot. Stupid, but perhaps easier than continuing to debug it?

   Brian M

   Guest I thought I’d throw this information into the mix from an attempt to be more systematic about troubleshooting this. This was with a Lenovo ThinkPad running Windows 10 Pro with all current updates, connected to a Galaxy A10 with no previous connection problems (but last attempt to connect and transfer photos was about a year ago, in which there were no problems). I plugged the phone into the laptop’s USB 3.0 port using the cable included with phone. There was no popup on the phone asking how I’d like to use the connection (charge, sync. etc.), and no popup on laptop, so whatever the default settings happened to be, they were preserved. I made no attempt to change any behavior that was already set from the factory. I opened Windows File Explorer and immediately saw the phone “Galaxy A10” under the “This PC” as a folder (next to Local Disk), so Windows is clearly treating it as a drive as far as the Windows File Explorer folder access is concerned. I clicked it and opened the the phone’s camera folder. I selected one image and dragged it to the computer’s desktop. After a successful copy and paste operation, and after waiting about 15 minutes, I looked for any option consistent with “ejecting” the phone or otherwise terminating the connection. I wasn’t able to find anything on the taskbar (or elsewhere in Windows), and I did not find anything on the phone. At that point, I unplugged the phone. Approximately 25 minutes after unplugging the phone, 147 popups occurred in less than 1 second. I manually closed each one. Approximately 1 hour and 6 minutes later, 88 popups occurred, which were closed. Approximately 3 hours later, 412 popups occurred which were closed. Approximately 50 minutes later, 12 popups occurred, which were closed. Approximately 41 hours and 30 minutes later, 48 popups occurred. I rebooted the laptop and no further popups occurred. I plugged in the phone to the same USB port for 1 hour and then unplugged it, and no popups occurred over the following three days. I repeated this same process, this time copying and pasting a photo from the Lenovo desktop to the internal storage on the phone. The same behavior was observed, with between a few dozen and a few hundred popups occurring at intervals from a few minutes to over a day between events. There appears to be no consistent number of popups, and the time intervals also appear to be completely random. I was not able to find any new processes or services that started upon plugging in or removing the phone, so the popups appear to be generated from a process or service that is already running. There is no specific software installed on the laptop for communicating with the Galaxy product (nothing installed by me, and no obvious software pre-installed at the time of computer purchase). I repeated this with and without OneDrive enabled, so that does not appear to be a factor. I repeated this with 8 different USB cables in addition to the factory cable, from cheap $5 gas station cables to expensive and heavily shielded cables that were in excess of $50, so USB cable characteristics do not appear to be a factor. I repeated this with each of the three USB ports on the laptop (one USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0), so port characteristics or addressing do not appear to be a factor. I performed this with PDF files, JPG files, TXT files, and PNG files separately, so the specific file type does not appear to be a factor. In every case, the popups continued indefinitely at random intervals until the laptop was rebooted. In one case, I powered the phone off while still connected rather than simply unplugging the phone, and the popups still occurred. I’m trying to think of any additional ways I could isolate particular behaviors/actions/variables, but I can’t really think of any. While I don’t know or understand the underlying cause, it’s clear to me that it doesn’t happen upon only connections/disconnections–you must actually move a file from one device to another before performing the disconnection. The fact that it occurs even after lengthy delays before disconnecting leads to me to believe that it’s not a case of removing the phone before a read/right operation can properly report completion status. The behavior seems to indicate that once a file transfer occurs, something is telling a Windows process/service to continue to maintain a connection with the phone, and then at random intervals, initiate some type of communication (that obviously fails because the phone is no longer connected). If a transfer never took place–that is, you plugged in the phone and simply unplugged it some time later–there are no popups. So there we are…more stuff to sort through. Personally, I no longer care, as it’s far more effective to simply use Bluetooth and ignore the drop/drag method from Explorer. Just not worth the drama in trying to fix (and that’s saying a lot as a NASA hardware engineer).

   Alex5723

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   Brian M Guest Thanks for that information about the phone application–that’s an interesting article, and I’ll admit that I was unaware of this application and the features it presents. Looking through it, I actually think some of the integration could be useful. But, going back to this issue of dozens or hundreds of popups, I’m wondering how to troubleshoot it directly to this application, and if this application is the culprit, how to stop it. I do not currently see any process or service running that matches this app, and having combed through this during my previous experiments, none appeared when my phone was plugged in. In fact, both the process list and the service list were identical, line-for-line, whether my phone was plugged in or not. This leads me to believe that this app you listed really isn’t being called when I plug my phone in–the file transfers are using the native Windows functionality for mounting a drive and transferring files to and from it using Windows File Explorer (and those services, being already resident in memory, result in no change to anything that shows up in Task Manager. When I manually start the application you listed, it did result in a new process running–“PhoneExperienceHost.exe”, but that process doesn’t automatically start when I plug in my phone. Disabling this process manually and then plugging my phone in allows me to conduct file transfers, and I get the popups after disconnecting my phone. The fact that the popups only occur after a file transfer (I can leave the phone plugged in to the USB port all day and there will be no popups until I transfer a file and then disconnect the phone) leads me to believe that something in the way Windows is tracking whether this drive is still mounted is causing the problem. My guess (and this is purely a guess because I’m not privy to any of Microsoft’s code here) is that when I plug the phone in, Windows creates this logical drive connection, just like if I plugged in an SD card or an external hard drive, but when I unplug it, it’s not releasing some resource that was allocated. If a file transfer takes place within this time, Windows continues to check the drive after disconnection, but apparently doesn’t realize that it’s no longer installed. In short, this appears to me to be nothing more than a failure by Windows to recognize that this drive no longer exists. Since Windows can differentiate between different types of devices–it knows whether you’ve inserted a USB drive, a CD-ROM, or an external hard drive, it makes sense that Windows can also determine that this is a phone (even without a separate application telling it so). It appears that for this device type–a phone, rather than a USB drive, or my camera, or my Garmin watch–it is not handling the connection/disconnection process properly. This does NOT mean I am calling this Microsoft’s fault. It’s entirely possible that whatever data is being exchanged when the phone is plugged in is improperly formatted or otherwise wrong, and Windows is getting confused, leading it to believe it’s some other type of device to which it responds to a disconnect in a different way. No way for me to no, but it’s suspicious. I should note that there is a service entitled PhoneSvc (with a description of “Manages the telephony state on the device”), but from what I remember, this is literally the native Windows service for dealing with faxes/calls/etc. and would have nothing to do with an external USB connection to a phone. In fact, I tested this by disabling that process and attempting to plug in my phone–it responded and allowed me to transfer files, meaning the PhoneSvc service has nothing to do with it. Long story short–while your introducing me to this new app is intriguing, the fact that it’s not loading upon phone connection and the fact that I’ve even intentionally disabled it and can still transfer files and get popups tells me that there’s likely something more going on.