Hard Disk Monitoring

Windows 1909 and HD Sentinel Pro 5.61

Doesn't happen every time, but, almost every time I do a Shut Down or a Restart I get a message saying that HD Sentinel is preventing Shut Down or Restart. The main window is not open but the tray icons are active. Any ideas?

Thanks for your message.

Sorry for the possible troubles, but I can confirm that no, this is not really a bug/problem in Hard Disk Sentinel but exactly the opposite: it can increase attention that one (or more) disk drives may not respond as should.

Generally during the periodic status detection/access of the disk drives, Hard Disk Sentinel is waiting for the response and the status. This is usually a quick procedure, question of milliseconds. But if one or more disk drive(s) do not respond as should, there may be long delays in the operation, then yes, Hard Disk Sentinel is still waiting for it. So generally this behaviour can increase attention to the issue with the drive which may slower / not responding as expected.

This may be (for example) an external hard disk drive: the most common cause is a 2.5" external hard disk (powered from USB port) which is connected to USB 2.0 port. As it may not able to provide enough power for proper operation: the drive may not able to properly spin up and may not provide status/response as should. Not sure if you may have such external hard disk, but if so, you may try to disconnect, at least to check/confirm if it may be affected.

I'd recommend to use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option before shut down, so I can check the actual disk configuration - and it may give some ideas, thoughts about what happens and is there anything to change/improve (generally with the disk drive(s) and in Hard Disk Sentinel).

Thank you for the reply. Report sent.

Still having issues at times with the shutdown. I have found that if I right-click on one of the two tray icons (have two SSD installed) and select "Exit" and then shut down the computer everything functions perfectly. So, I'm trying to put together a batch file that will "Exit" HD Sentinel and then shut down the laptop. I've tried the following in an elevated cmd:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>TASKKILL /im HDSentinel.exe
SUCCESS: Sent termination signal to the process "HDSentinel.exe" with PID 10724.

. . . but HD Sentinel does not shut down.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>TASKKILL /im HDSentinelTray.exe

. . . but the response is that HDSentinel can not be found.

Could you please provide a simple cmd that will quit HD Sentinel and shut down the laptop. I can then create a batch file and just double click it when I want to shutdown.

Sorry for the troubles, but generally this is not really related to Hard Disk Sentinel... Something on your system blocks the software sometimes and this lead to that it is waiting for one of the the devices (disk drives or generally the disk controller/chipset) and "not responding" until there is a response from the device.

If this happens then yes, it may not respond to the close command initiated by any means.

Generally all possible commands
- right click -> Exit
- taskkill
- Windows shutdown
use same methods to attempt to close the software. If the software is not blocked - then all of them should work, but if blocked - then none of them will work.

With other words, if you can manually close by right click -> Exit
then it confirms that the software is working (not blocked). So in this case it would completely and correctly close also when Windows want to close it (if you'd select the Shut down) or even if you'd attempt the taskkill command. But in this case, taskkill or other tricks are not required.

But if something is blocking the software then yes, it may not close even with right click -> Exit (or for taskkill or for the Windows shutdown).

> C:\WINDOWS\system32>TASKKILL /im HDSentinelTray.exe
> . . . but the response is that HDSentinel can not be found.

It is completely normal and expected - as in the list of tasks, you may notice that HDSentinelTray.exe is not running.
It can be used only for service mode but it is completely different operating mode, so HDSentinelTray.exe is not running.


As mentioned previously, it would be still important to know what may cause such blockage and when it happens actually, for example to connect to an event or a device (eg. may happen after resuming from standby OR after a removable disk drive/pendrive/memory card removed or so).

I double examined the report you sent previously and I also noticed that no chipset driver installed for the actual configuration, the devices work with generic / Standard Windows device drivers.

In most cases, there are no problems with this solution (in some cases, this is even better than the driver provided by the manufacturer) but with some controllers/chipsets, this standard driver can cause issues (degraded performance, weird compatibility issues like this).
So I'd check and attempt to install the chipset drivers too for the system as they may help too.