Temperature tray icon disappearing and reappearing

[raphaelmsx]

Hi people and hdsentinel.

The temperature tray icon is constantly disappearing, and after about 10 or 20 minutes, it reappears, only to repeat the cycle again.

I have "Display hard disk temperature on tray icon" turned on, also "Display only the highest temperature on tray", because I have a lot of HDDs, and only care about the highest temp.

Please help, and thanks in advance.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message. Sorry for the troubles, but probably there is absolutely no bug/problem here.

If you see this behaviour, then probably it is caused by one or more disk(s) constantly disconnecting/connecting again.

If Hard Disk Sentinel detects the changed configuration, then it automatically re-detects the status of the drives and this results that the tray icon(s) disappear and then displayed again, which is completely normal and expected behaviour. So if you see constant/frequent change - then there is good chance that one or more disk(s) may not stable: for example USB disk drive(s) removed/disappear from the system for a short time.

You may try to
- open the File menu -> Drive connection/removal event log as it can point on affected drive(s)
- disconnect some external/removable drives (if possible) and check if there is any difference

As always suggested, if you use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, it is possible to check the actual status/situation.
Maybe you can use multiple times, eg. before/after the tray icon disappearing so then it is possible to compare them.

[raphaelmsx]

Hi.

Yes, I have four USB drives, but I don't think they are disconnecting/connecting, because:

I've noticed the tray icon disapearing and I can still use all four drives, and I've also noticed the icon disapearing in the middle of a huge copy operation (TBs of data) between two USB drives, and the copy doesn't stop or cause error messages.

Today I noticed the icon disappearing/reappearing one time, just checked the Drive connection/removal event log and it doesn't show any removal log.

In fact, right now the icon is missing, and I can still access all four drives. I'll send the test report now, and then later again.

Thanks.

[raphaelmsx]

Hi again, just opened HDSentinel in order to send the report, and the tray icon was immediately restored, in fact, I remembered that if I don't want to wait for the icon to reappear by itself, I can just open HDSentinel and it shows again.

Just checked again the connection/removal log, no entries about removal whatsoever.

I sent the report anyway.

Thanks!

[hdsentinel]

Hi!

I sent answer in e-mail to the report, we can investigate further. Would need to somehow reproduce the situation for sure.

[otter]

I’m observing the same thing in recent months. Same behavior w/ 5.7 Portable, 6.0.1 release and beta 6.0.1.10. In my case, if all icons are allowed to be shown they do not disappear but like you I really hope I can get it to go back to just the highest temp shown.

If I set display only the highest temperature on tray and the detection interval is ten seconds then after roughly 60 seconds the icon will disappear (for ten seconds exactly) then return for 60 seconds/disappear for ten seconds and continue that cycle. If I set the detection interval for 60 seconds, than the time the icon disappears matches that 60 seconds.

I have three PCs and only one PC is doing it. All PCs have the same updated Windows 10 Enterprise IOT on them with Acronis 2021. Same model drives with same BIOS and drive firmwares. The storage controllers are the same and I’m pretty sure the controller drivers are the same as well but I’d have to double check to be certain. I can confirm there are no logged drive disconnections.

Attached are two screen recordings showing the behavior when the detection interval is set to 10 seconds vs 60 seconds.

[otter]

This is interesting. Just now, I installed the latest release version 6.10 and I'm not observing the ill behavior when set to display only the highest temperature.

@raphaelmsx I didn't notice anything in the 6.10 release notes to indicate an impact on system tray behavior. It looks like the official 6.10 release just has a rollup of all the stuff from betas 6.01.2 - 6.01.10.

If I close 6.10 and run portable 5.7 instead, than portable 5.7 exhibits the ill behavior. So it seems there is definitely a change of some of sort.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks - but generally this is not really a bug/problem of Hard Disk Sentinel.

Generally the tray icons are managed by Windows itself. Hard Disk Sentinel can
- show
- hide
- and change the icon (eg. the value displayed)

While I could never reproduce this behaviour yes, I received some similar information. After investigating the reports (your report with the older 5.70 verison shows similar) Windows reported an error to Hard Disk Sentinel when the icon is changed: probably when the different value should be displayed.
If Hard Disk Sentinel detects this error condition, then it "knows" that the icon is not displayed and periodically automatically attempts to show it again. This is why you may notice that after some time, the icon appears again, exactly as should.

This is surely independent from the actual configuration, absolutely not related to the disk drive(s), BIOS, etc.
Maybe depends on Windows installation and possible installed updates, not really sure.

While never saw similar, all updated versions have some changes which tries to do things slightly differently (ideally better).
So yes, there is good chance that updated version(s) may work differently.

Maybe if you have the opportunity, please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option with the latest 6.10 version too, as then I can check, compare with the previous one. This (as always) can give some ideas, thoughts for future improvements.