Vista & Removable Drives

OK. Now, I'm fed up. Vista has some serious problems with removal drives (flash drives). I would connect my Sansa E250 to my computer to recharge its battery before going to bed and in the morning, before going out, I would safely remove it from power. BUT! Vista says that something is using it! WTF! I've only plugged it onto the computer to recharge my portable music player device! I haven't done anything else. WTF Vista is thinking?

I've had that happen.
When I connect an external hard disk via a USB adapter, the Safely Remove Hardware thing from the tray sometimes works OK and sometimes not. It depends what's on the particular hard disk, such as whether it only has data files or also has a Windows OS on it.

I don't know of any solution except just don't use the Remove Hardware tray icon. If you are sure there is no reading or writing happening on the USB device, it's probably safe to just unplug it. If that seems too risky, you could put the computer into Sleep mode, then unplug the device.

That's what I do each time (using Remove Hardware Tray icon). Sometimes it works, sometime not. It will not work most of the time. On the flash drive there are MP3s, coz it's my SanDisk Sansa E250. Sometimes, it's my USB Flash Drive where there is stuff like homeworks some softwares, pictures and random stuff.

If anyone knows how to solve this, I'll be happy.
Btw, if it's being used, there's maybe a process behind that uses it without me interfering. Any idea?