Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media not working

Question

Today I turned on the PC. I used it a little bit, and tried ejecting my external HDD, it would not exit.
To fix this i have tried:

1. Going to the Safely Remove Hardware icon in the tray, but when I right-clicked nothing appeared, when I left-clicked, nothing happened.
2. Going to the explorer and eject there, but no eject option appeared by clicking on the HDD.
3. Then I tried running RunDll32.exe shell32.dll, Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll to get the Safely Remove Hardware dialog, selected the HDD and clicked stop, but an error message appeared saying I couldn't remove it.
4. I restarted the computer and no luck. So in the end I just turned off the computer and unplugged it manually.

Some time later I tried connecting my Wifi Remote to the PC through my Bluetooth adapter and it wouldn't work. (it was working the last time I connected it). The Bluetooth icon appears in the icon tray but when I looked at the adapter, it had no light on (when it's plugged it emits a blue light).

1. I have changed the port, it connected but quickly disconnected again.
2. Tried other port but no luck, it's not even quickly connecting now.

I can connect my iPod with no problems and can eject it through iTunes.
So I want to know:
How can I fix the USB problem? OS is Windows 7 Home Premium.

Edit: I woke up now and tried to turn on my PC and...it won't turn on. It stops at the motherboard screen, but even though I press del to go to BIOS nothing happens. Is there anything I can do or it's the end of something?

Edit2: I took the USB Adapter out and now it's working. There are somethings I'll never understand... The initial problem persists though.

Answer 1

I do not know, so here is a long comment, with some things to check in no specific order.

1) You could view more in the device manager. Disabling a disk as a device there, will still flush the write buffer (and may still lock things up, and not do it correct). This would be slightly different programming parts and pieces, and is likely to have the exact same results, it will provide more testing.

2) Check the drive, no matter what you have done with it or the state you know it is in. Do a checkdisk on it with the F option like

chkdsk D: /F /X  

F is a fuller testing, X forces a dismount.
Disclaimer: prefer not to do checkdisks on disks that are known to be failing, when windows tells you to format known good disks, and other user awareness, it is not an infallable tool and can make corrections when it has no idea what is going on.

3) If possible run 2 types of tests on the external, run a SMART test and check the state of the raw data for reallocated, and pending. Why because a failing disk can slow things terribly, even if it responds somewhat and seems to be working. Also test do some copying in both directions and do a compare after the copy (in any way) without a compare this test has way less value, confirm that the data transfered is Bit for Bit (or byte?) accurate.

4) Set the policy parameters for that disk in the Device manager , in properties in the Policy tab to "quick removal" this is the "safer" setting, and it should be left there until you have everything straightened out and working properly. It stops the write caching forcing data more quickly to the drive itself and will act a bit slower for some operations. Should this really be on if there isn't an uninteruptable power supply anyways?

5) Check the resources monitor or any other programs you use for disk activity that seems suspicious or incorrect, there will often be the OS doing stuff, but if you close all windows to the disk, and have stopped using it, any wild activity continuing should be investigated with something that shows what program is doing that.
C:\Windows\System32\resmon.exe In the disk section look in the Disk Activity tab, and push on the File column this will sort by file name (including disk letter), and now you can see easier what (if any) activity is going on a specific disk. If you spotted something it will show what process is doing it, and it may provide some clues.

6) Check the Event viewer %windir%\system32\eventvwr.msc /s for any relevent errors.

7) Show Hidden Devices in device manager and clean up the mess of repeated and unused, and uninstalled items, just as a housekeeping task, this does not become a problem usually, just a mess.

8) Possible need to run a SFC /Scannow to insure the parts and pieces of the OS are in order. this takes little time, and is not the miracle cure to anything, but it is there.

9) See if your Antivirus program has anything to do with it? Or update it, run a full scan and turn it to manuel for a few days , instead of active scanning, check its logs and all.

If you have any more information provide it.