Well it's not a patch or a filter driver, but it is some code I whipped up when I had the same problem.

The following are delphi formatted calls to the sendmessage API to hide and show the safely remove hardware icon.

SendMessage(FindWindow('SystemTray_Main', NIL), $4DC, 2, 0); //Hide
SendMessage(FindWindow('SystemTray_Main', NIL), $4DC, 2, 1); //Show

Not eaxctly the cleanest way to do it, but it serves its purpose.