No system tray icon, program not working as before

[Hard_Disk_Howie]

Hello, this is probably not a "bug" issue, but this section seemed to be correct for "problems" with HDS function.

Hard Disk Sentinel Pro has been working quite well for me for past 2-1/2 years until few days ago, but now, even though main GUI starts and shows on screen with Windows bootup, nothing shows up in System tray.

I have a feeling problems might possibly be related to HDS program settings corruption after forced power-off of computer a few days ago (computer failed to fully resume from 'sleep', and power had to be forced off.) That led to possible corruption of Windows files, which I believe was properly resolved with Windows System File Checker (SFC) scannow command.

I have already tried reinstalling HDS over the existing installation, using a fresh download (from https://www.hdsentinel.com/download.php) but the same issue remains, and nothing shows in the System tray.

Thanks in advance for some guidance!

[hdsentinel]

Yes, it is probably not a bug in the software....

Please check Configuration -> Hard Disk Drives page.
There you can toggle system tray icon for each disk drive by DOUBLE CLICK on the appropriate disk.

Probably the configuration file ( HDSentinel.INI ) damaged as you wrote and this can cause that no tray icon displayed.

I'd try to
- completely close Hard Disk Sentinel by File -> Exit
- delete the file HDSentinel.INI from the folder of the software ( C:\Program Files (x86)\Hard Disk Sentinel by default )
- start it again

just to reset the settings to defaults. Let's see if things will work correctly then. This does not delete statistics, logs, license, etc. just the settings.

While (re)installing is usually a good tip to avoid possible damaged file(s), it keeps all settings too. So if the settings file damaged - then the reinstalled version will surely work similarly as you can see.

If things are same after clearing the INI file, I suggest to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option as it may give some ideas, thoughts.

[Hard_Disk_Howie]

(I wrote a more comprehensive follow-up, but the forum settings seem configured auto-log-off rather quickly, without notification, so by the time my message was composed and I hit the Submit button, the system had logged me out again, and the entire message was lost.)

Shorter version, re-typed:

Thanks for the guidance.

Without deleting the .ini file, I saw that the Configuration -> Hard Disk Drives page had no drives selected as visible as tray icon. I was able to double-click to reenable that. But since the .ini file change seemed related to my computer forced-power-off, I have decided to let HDS create a “fresh” version of the .ini file and move forward that way.

Thanks again for your excellent program and technical support!
-Howie

[hdsentinel]

Sorry for the troubles. Generally the discussion board configured to allow editing/posting a single post for 2 hours. Not sure, but maybe your IP address changed and this caused that you logged off. Sorry.
The discussion board engine will be updated very soon, this may improve the situation to prevent similar.

Thanks for the info, good to hear that things are working now correctly

[joliebrousseau]

It's possible that the forced power-off of your computer may have caused some corruption to the HDS program settings. Reinstalling the program usually fixes this issue, but in your case, that doesn't seem to be the solution.

One thing you could try is to manually add the HDS program to the Windows startup list. This should ensure that the program is always running in the background, even if it doesn't show up in the system tray. Here's how you can do it:

Press the Windows key + R on your keyboard to open the Run dialog box.
Type "shell:startup" (without the quotes) and hit Enter. This will open the Startup folder.
Right-click on an empty space in the Startup folder and select "New" -> "Shortcut".
In the "Type the location of the item" field, enter the path to the HDS executable file. By default, it should be located in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Hard Disk Sentinel\HDSentinel.exe".
Click "Next" and give the shortcut a name (e.g. "Hard Disk Sentinel").
Click "Finish" to create the shortcut.
Now, when you start Windows, the HDS program should start automatically in the background. You should be able to check if it's running by opening the Windows Task Manager and looking for the HDSentinel.exe process.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks, but this Startup folder solution may not work....

There are different topics to describe how it is possible to manually create a task in Windows Scheduler (if ever required) to start Hard Disk Sentinel:

https://www.hdsentinel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10694#p14864

https://www.hdsentinel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=18543