HDS crashes without a trace

[Boulder]

My computer is turned on 24/7. Ever since I upgraded to Windows 10 in January this year, I've had the issue where HDS occasionally crashes by itself without Windows actually noticing anything. The tray icon is there but when I hover the mouse pointer over it, it disappears. This happens maybe once a week or a bit less frequently so it's definitely not a daily issue. I've tried checking all the Windows logs but there is no trace whatsoever. It occurs in v5.20 and also the earlier betas.

Is there some debug build that I could use to catch the problem for you to fix?

[hdsentinel]

Sounds interesting.
Generally when the tray icons there, it means Hard Disk Sentinel could not close itself correctly, like if somehow terminated (like if something may forced it to close).
To investigate, would be required to "connect" this event to something which may happen with the system.
If running 24/7, then power management (entering/leaving standby, hibernation or similar) should never occur, so there may be something else.
Please try to observe when this may happen actually, for example after connection/removal of a drive (removable device) or something similar, just to verify if something is related.

Please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option. Also if you see LOG.TXT file in the folder of Hard Disk Sentinel, please send in e-mail to info (at) hdsentinel (dot) com
These may help to check the actual situation, examine the configuration and may give ideas, thoughts - at least to try for further investigation.

[hdsentinel]

As in the meantime some other users reported similar, did lots of testing, attempting to find what is exactly closing the software, as there were no crash, errors or similar.

Anyway, just added extra protection in the latest 5.30.8 version, so if Hard Disk Sentinel runs for longer time and somehow closed/terminated incorrectly, then it restarted by the "watchdog".

I'd recommend to try the latest 5.30.8 version, hopefully there will be no such / similar issues happen.

[Boulder]

Thank you, I just updated to the latest beta. It's a useful feature for me as my external HDDs spin down quite fast without HDS keeping them running all the time.

[thwei]

Hi,
I have got same problem with HDS crashing without any notification in 5.60 version.

Attached HWDLOG.TXT where I found some relevant info about crashes.

Maybe it would help fix the problem.

The system is Windows 8.1 x64 with i5-6600k and 16 GB RAM.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks, but I do not really see any problem.
Do you see an error message or so, which would indicate any kind of "crashing"?

I checked the log file but I see no errors (which would indicate any kind of "crashing"). It seems the software simply closed by something (without any probems), just like if it would be closed/terminated from the task manager and/or closed by the system (eg. when attempting a Windows update) or something similar.

A "crash" would happen when you'd see an error message or unexpected behaviour (and/or would be probably logged in this file or somewhere else)
but from this file, I do not see anything which would indicate that.

I'd recommend to please update to latest version as it may make some changes.
Also I'd recommend to please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option after the update, it may give some ideas, thoughts about what could happen.

[thwei]

No I don't see any message. I only after some time notice that the icon disappeared from the notification area. For example this part in the file:

13-10-2020 02:00:34.225 Active 439230 23076864 2
13-10-2020 02:33:34.227 Not found 1 / 15
13-10-2020 02:33:34.284 --Closed--
25-10-2020 00:00:01.051 --Started--
25-10-2020 00:00:31.061 Active 30 33042432 2
25-10-2020 00:00:31.069 Running 37150720 9
25-10-2020 01:00:31.079 Active 3630 33599488 2

tells, as you can see, the app has been closed at 13-10-2020 02:33:34.284. I didn't do that. In Windows event log there is no info about HDS if it crashed or something else. It must have been by some other means. The "Not found 1 / 15" might provide some clues on what happend. As you can see I restarted the app after 12 days. The PC was already up and running all that time.

If the PC was shutdown then the contents of log are for example:

01-11-2020 15:01:21.184 Active 662430 26124288 2
14-11-2020 00:00:01.586 --Started--
14-11-2020 00:00:31.588 Active 30 29970432 2
14-11-2020 00:00:31.597 Running 27312128 9
14-11-2020 01:00:31.619 Active 3630 1409024 2

There is no "Not found 1 / 15" and "--Closed--" information in the log.

Maybe that details would help solve the problem.

I use the software since version 4.60, not sure if the problem existed with 4.xx, but most definitely it is with 5.xx versions.

PS.
HDS doesn't save any more info in hwdlog.txt file. I think the size is limited to 100 kB. I renamed it so maybe the hwdlog.txt would be recreated with new data.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks, but as I tried to explain, this file is only part of the picture. So alone from this file, we still do not know what happens.

> In Windows event log there is no info about HDS if it crashed or something else.

Yes, because it did not "crash". Something may closed it.

> I use the software since version 4.60, not sure if the problem existed with 4.xx, but most definitely it is with 5.xx versions.

You may re-load a previous version, but generally that did not have this hwdlog.txt (as it did not monitor if the software closed by something).

> PS. HDS doesn't save any more info in hwdlog.txt file.

Yes. Because this file is saved by an extension of HDSentinel, a "watchdog", which monitors the running state of the main application.
But from this file alone, we can't see what exactly happened (and what could cause).

> I think the size is limited to 100 kB. I renamed it so maybe the hwdlog.txt would be recreated with new data.

Yes. Exactly to prevent a big file, it's size is limited so it contains only the most recent entries.

I can repeat what I wrote:

I'd recommend to please update to latest version as it may make some changes.

Also I'd recommend to please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option after the update, it may give some ideas, thoughts about what could happen.

[VGER]

Hello,


I'm seeing the same issue here (using v5.61).

What's interesting is that this only happens on one of my machines: It's a desktop, not running 24/7, but running long hours. More and more frequently (it seems), I notice that the HD-Sentinel icon just isn't there any more in the tray. I never quit HDS intentionally on this machine, it starts at system startup and is supposed to run constantly. This "vanishing" is totally unrelated to whether I had opened HDS since boot or not - it may even happen minutes after I had opened HDS to view some data and minimized (to tray) it again. If anything, I feel that it happens more often in the latest version.

The system is using two SSDs and two HDDs (I'll send a full report in a few minutes.)


What _may_ be related:

On this machine, I'm having curious issues with one of the HDDs. Neither the drive (as in SMART) nor HDS (as in Logs or Alerts) show anything wrong with it, but when accessed, it is shown to be 100% busy and gets slow to respond. The second HDD of the same model shows values well over 90% when stressed, but never flatlines at 100%. On the contrary, the data transfer rate of the questionable drive seems ok.

When writing large amounts of data to it, the drive in question even seems to "timeout" on some occasions, leading to Windows freezing. On the other hand, when doing a benchmark (ChrystalDiskMark) on it, it responds perfectly fine. The problem seems to be worse with large files (e.g. video files of 5 GB in size.)

I already tried changing the SATA cable and moving the drive to a diffferent SATA port, but that didn't seem to change anything.


The HDS "exits" happen without the drive in question being in active use at the time - but of course Windows might do something to it in the background.


Regards

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message.

Sounds really interesting as exactly after your previous messages, further protections added in the latest version.
I received your report and examined, I see absolutely no problems/issues, everything works completely as expected.

Not sure, but what you wrote about the hard disk can be simply related to fragmentation: then an intensive disk operation (especially copy/move of high amount of data) can cause very high disk utilization and slow response. This may be normal and does not indicate problem with the disk drive, especially if the drive seems perfect.

Personally I'd surely try one of the following

1) use Configuration -> Backup Configuration and save the current status/settings etc. to a single file.
2) then uninstall Hard Disk Sentinel and delete the complete folder where it installed completely
3) have a clean, fresh reinstall of the latest possible version: https://www.harddisksentinel.com/hdsent ... _setup.zip

Alternatively, if you do not want this, you can try to

1) completely close Hard Disk Sentinel by File -> Exit and do not start the installed version
2) instead, download and extract the latest Portable version: https://www.harddisksentinel.com/hdsent ... rtable.zip
to a completely new, empty folder and launch that manually

So generally you can check what happens if there is a completely clean instance. Not sure, but maybe a setting, a previously saved data / status / statistics / log file or similar can cause troubles.

[VGER]

Hello,


After HDS exited again on me only minutes after system start (already using the new v5.70), I took your advice and started using a portable version. This portable version hasn't exited once so far (in a few days.)

So indeed it seems to be some settings issue. If I do the "backup config and reinstall" routine you suggested - will it retain the history of the HDDs in use? I'd very much like to keep this (install date of HDDs, bytes written counters and so on).


However, this still seems curious to me: If there really was an error in the database or settings files - wouldn't you see a "crash" in the log files or reports instead of a regular "exit"?


Regards

[hdsentinel]

Yes, it is really interesting. Yes, generally there are protections, so I'd also expect different behaviour. Not sure which file itself (eg. INI file which contains the settings and/or one or more statistics file) could be damaged which causes this really weird situation.

Yes, I can confirm that if you use the Configuration -> Advanced options -> Backup configuration and then you restore after re-installation, then all settings, statistics, logs, license etc... will be restored. But this can be the problem: then things may re-appear again.

Personally I'd try the following:

1) use Configuration -> Advanced options -> Backup configuration to save these to a single file, just to be sure.
2) also manually backup the complete Hard Disk Sentinel folder so you can have access to all files independently from each other: you can safely delete/restore any of them.
3) try to delete only the HDSentinel.ini and HDSAction.ini file (if present) from the folder of the software and start HDSentinel.exe

This will only clear all settings (restore to factory default options) but keeps all statistics, logs, license etc.
Let's see if things are different - so then at least we can "narrow" things down.

If you prefer, you can also send the backup-configuration-file (saved in step 1) to info (at) hdsentinel (dot) com, as this may help, give thoughts.

[VGER]

One small hitch: I don't have a "backup configuration" option in "Configuration/Advanced Options".

Has this been moved or renamed?

Regards

[hdsentinel]

No, it not moved or renamed.
This function is available in Hard Disk Sentinel Professional only, the standard version do not have this option.

You can try to manually copy (backup) the entire folder where Hard Disk Sentinel installed to keep all files and try to manually delete the INI files to check first.
If you see similar behaviour, then you can try to delete HDSentinel.sta file (generic statistics file) too.

[VGER]

I am already using the Professional Edition (at least Help/About says so), but the "Backup" option is still not there.


Regarding the "exiting", today I noted something else:

At least today (not yet sure if this really is the case every time), HDS vanished, but as it turns out didn't exit at all: The process was still running, just the icon had gone (and no, it wasn't hidden by Windows either.)

I have HDS set to only display one icon for the hottest HDD. Thus, the icon along with its title changes often, whenever there is another HDD to show. Is it possible that sometimes this fails, and the icon isn't shown any more? I even noted that it came back on its own after a while, but I'm positive that during the "out" there was no other HDS-icon either in the primary nor the "hidden" tray area.


Regards

[hdsentinel]

> I am already using the Professional Edition (at least Help/About says so), but the "Backup" option is still not there.

Sorry....
Please look on Configuration -> Update page (not on the Advanced Options page) for the Backup Configuration option.

Sorry to say, but I'm sure something may prevent Hard Disk Sentinel working correctly on your system (at least with the current settings/status, so may be useful to try the methods I wrote).

Probably the clean install could also help.

[VGER]

I seem to have found a solution for my case:

First I switched HDS to display seperate tray icons for the HDDs (instead of "just show highest temp" in a single icon). In this case, that meant four seperate tray icons.

As I watched these for some time I noted that every once in a while one of the four icons just disappeared. It was nowhere to be found, not among the hidden tray icons, not invisible (sometimes a tray icon can fail to display but is still there when you mouse-over it - though never seen before with HDS).

I then cleared the tray icon cache in the Windows registry. This reset the status of all icons to defaults.

Since then, all four HDS-icons are shown consistently. I haven't noted a single drop-out in over a week now.

Next, I may reset HDS to only show a single icon again (not so sure - I grew acustomed to the multi-icon view in the meantime ) and expect that this, too, won't disappear again.

tl;dr: (Probably) fixed by clearing Windows tray icon cache.

Regards