HDS doesn't load

[austinjohn]

I am running HDS on two machines running Windows 10 and although I have "Load with Windows" and "Show application on both Task Bar and System Tray" checked on both machines HDS loads at Startup on one machine but not on the other. What am I missing? Thanks. John

[hdsentinel]

Is the current user name and the name of the computer same?
If this is true, Windows may not start software configured to be started automatically on logon. Not really understand the reason, but this happens with Win7, Win8 also...

Do you have system management software/tools? Those may also affect software configured for auto-startup.

[austinjohn]

Thanks for the reply.

No, the current user name and the name of the computer are not the same.

I did uncheck both "Load with Windows" and "Show application on both Task Bar and System Tray" and restart, then load HDS as administrator, check both "Load with Windows" and "Show application on both Task Bar and System Tray" and restart but HDS is still not loading at Startup.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks, yes, it is good idea to uncheck and then re-check the options, as then HDS re-writes the auto-load entries.

> then load HDS as administrator, check both "Load with Windows" ... and restart

And then did you log in as Administrator, the same user where you enabled the options?

Hard Disk Sentinel should start when you log in with the same user, who installed it.
So if you log in with a different user, it will not load.

[austinjohn]

And then did you log in as Administrator, the same user where you enabled the options?

Hard Disk Sentinel should start when you log in with the same user, who installed it.
So if you log in with a different user, it will not load.

My first statement of the situation said "two computers" and in fact there are three, all of which are running Windows 10.

Computer #1: I am Administrator and there are no other users. HDS loads fine on this computer. Computer #2: Therese Ruffing is Administrator and there are no other users. This is the problem computer on which HDS does not load. Computer #3: Therese Ruffing is Administrator and I am a user on this computer. HDS loads fine on this computer.

I installed HDS Family Plan on all three computers using the HDS Family Plan Registration Key and all three Registration Pages say Registration Name: John Blinn/Therese Ruffing, Registration Key is blank and Program Status: Successfully registered and activated. When I installed HDS on Computer 2 I would have used Therese's Log-on as I am not a user on that computer. Likewise when I use "Run as Administrator" Therese would be the user as she is the only user.

Thanks for your continued help. John

[hdsentinel]

Thanks! This sounds interesting that generally if they all have same Windows 10 OS - they should work the same in this field.

Generally, Hard Disk Sentinel uses Windows Scheduler to configure itself to launch automatically when the current user (Therese in this case) logs in. If you have the opportunity, please check the Windows Scheduler on the Control Panel to verify if it's configured - as it may contain information about
- when the software last started
- what kind of error(s) happened which may prevent startup

Also please check the folder where Hard Disk Sentinel installed, by default it is C:\Program Files (x86)\Hard Disk Sentinel
If you find a file winsched.txt there, please send it to info @ hdsentinel . com for investigation.
This contains logs/results about the communication with the mentioned Windows Scheduler, it may contain error(s) during installation and this may help to check what can be wrong on this system.

Excuse me for the troubles, I hope with some further investigation we can find what is wrong and how to improve the situation.

[austinjohn]

Thanks again for getting back with me.

On Computer #1 (John Administrator and HDS loads) I checked Task Scheduler and there is an Active Task for Hard Drive Sentinel_John. On Computer #2 (Therese Administrator and HDS does not load) I checked Task Scheduler and there is no Active Task for Hard Drive Sentinel. I have also sent winsched.txt from Computer #2 to info@hdsentinel.com. Thanks. John

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for the file !

This is interesting. In the end of the file, I see that Hard Disk Sentinel installed itself in the task scheduler: so in theory, the entry should be there.

If possible, can you please check what happens if you manually try to create a task for Hard Disk Sentinel in the task scheduler, by inspecting and copying the details from Computer #1 (John)?
Maybe you can export the task at Computer #1 John and after adjusting the username, import on Computer #2 Theresa, as then hopefully it will be started as should.

[austinjohn]

This is interesting. In the end of the file, I see that Hard Disk Sentinel installed itself in the task scheduler: so in theory, the entry should be there.

If possible, can you please check what happens if you manually try to create a task for Hard Disk Sentinel in the task scheduler, by inspecting and copying the details from Computer #1 (John)? Maybe you can export the task at Computer #1 John and after adjusting the username, import on Computer #2 Theresa, as then hopefully it will be started as should.

Thanks again for your continuing suggestions. Some years ago I was a moderator for Cubase, a music software product developed by German musical software and equipment company Steinberg for music recording, arranging and editing as part of a digital audio workstation, and I can appreciate how difficult it is to try to troubleshoot problems when the cause may be hardware or OS and not the supported software and thus appreciate all your efforts.

Loading Computer #2 Task Scheduler I first was greeted by a Windows Error Message "Task Scheduler service is not available. Task Scheduler will attempt to connect to it. OK?" and clicking on "OK" Task Scheduler did load. I could not find a Hard Disk Sentinel task but did import into Computer #2 the task from Computer #1 and adjusted the username. I restarted but of course Hard Disk Sentinel did not load because Task Scheduler did not load.

I then did a websearch using ""Task Scheduler service is not available. Task Scheduler will attempt to connect to it." to see if I could find a solution to the Task Scheduler problem. I found nothing specific to Windows 10 but did find "http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... ae1?page=2". I will try that later today, see if that solves the Task Scheduler problem and report back.

John

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your answer and understanding.
Yes, sometimes it is hard to diagnose, especially if there are 3 similar systems with same OS where things should work the same way - but one of them works completely differently...

Yes, I'm sure that there is a generic issue with the Task Scheduler which may not be able to launch software configured to be started with it.

Thanks for the link and the tip, this seems interesting and yes, may help in issues related to Task Scheduler.

I remember once when there was an issue with a "crowded" Windows installation, the Task Scheduler corrupted and deleting everything from C:\Windows\System32\Tasks folder helped - but this may remove entries so I'd try it last if nothing else helps.

[austinjohn]

Success!

I was able to get Task Scheduler running again by deleting an old task from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Schedule\TaskCache\Tree, I then deleted the Hard Drive Sentinel tasks from the same location, re-imported the Hard Drive Sentinel task from Computer #1 into Computer #2 and with lots of restarts, the Hard Drive Sentinel icon is there in the Tray as it's supposed to be. Many thanks! John

[hdsentinel]

Thanks so much, glad to hear things are better now

Thanks also for the information and details about how to fixed, I'm sure it may help other users as well.

[hdsentinelfan]

Hi,

I am glad that I found this thread as I was fighting the HD Sentinel autostart problem on a fresh W10 Pro Installation for some time now. Works on my other machine where I just upgraded to W10 Pro.
The only solution which works for me is to manually create the autostart entry on windows scheduler.

When I activate the autostart in hd sentinel it creates entries at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Schedule\TaskCache\Tree:
Folder: HardDiskSentinel , only one key "SD"
=> Result: Autostart doesnt work

When I create it manually the following information is created at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Schedule\TaskCache\Tree:
Folder: HDSentinel AutoStart (name chosen by me)
Keys: Id, Index, SD
=> Result: Autostart works fine

Aida64 for instance creates the correct autostart keys by selecting autostart in the application.

Now the question is if that is purely a windows issues or partially a HD Sentinel issue as well.
I reproduced it on the current stable version as well as 4.60.13 Pro.

Best,
Felix

[hdsentinel]

To be honest, I'm also investigating such issues for long time, but did not yet find a pattern.
When I tried to reproduce the issue, I never encountered problems, the autostart worked correctly on all systems since Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 plus the Server OSes (and older systems like XP/2003, where other method used).
Every time I tried, the autostart worked as should.

But yes, I know that in approx. 1/100 of situations, the task scheduler may got corrupted or Windows may refuse to properly add the task scheduler entries when Hard Disk Sentinel attempts to install itself.

Then disabling and re-enabling the autostart (to let Hard Disk Sentinel delete and re-construct the autostart entry) usually helps, but yes, in some situations, we may need to repair task scheduler cache and/or manually create the entries.

Just as it is not possible to surely reproduce (even on 100% identical systems) it is hard to find what could be wrong.

As I know, the other tool you mentioned uses similar method to create autostart entry, but maybe I'm wrong.
I continue investigating the situation and collect additional details and try to improve the communication with the task scheduler in all possible ways. Thanks for the tip, I'll check this - as this may also give further ideas, thoughts.

[hdsentinelfan]

Tnx a lot for your reply

Yes indeed - Aida64 most likely uses exactly the same method of creating tasks. And it works perfectly fine on my machines. Free demo at: www.aida64.com
I didnt see any specific hints in windows events log helping to understand whats going wrong with hd sentinel trying to create the task.

But I figured a potentially related problem: When trying to edit an existing tasks (even for Aida64) it complains about wrong parameters. The fix is to manually select the users account where the task should run.
The "solution" I found at http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin ... p?t=565871 (german - pls use chrome translate)

After I went through all errors of the W10 event log I feel that there indeed might be plenty of remaining smaller bugs in W10. Maybe our task problem might resolve itself via future W10 patches

Soon I will be getting the new Surface Pro 4 and I will test HD Sentinel autostart on this fresh install + report back.