HDSentinel causing Runaway CPU (50%+)

[shneor]

I have beev very happily using HSSentinel since I downloaded it on December 3, 2012. I have never updated it. I have also bee using Comodo Firewall during all this time, on my XP PC. I have been very happy because I could immediately see the cpu temperature in the tray.

Two nights ago, I received an update notification from Comodo. I installed it. When I rebooted, my cpu was busy forever for an hour - I could do nothing. I killed Comodo, but noticed tht HDSentinel was running amok - over 50% cpu. I disabled HDSentinel, rebooted - this time Comodo was fine, but HDSentinel raced the cpu so much I had to uninstall it. Comodo assures me that was nothing in their update that could cause this problem, and in fact, ever since I uninstalled HDSentinel, I have experienced no problems - except that I really miss the information HDSentinel provided.

I am looking for informed advice - what should I do to restore HDSentinel? What might be the cause ofthe problem? And How can I fix it?

Thank you.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message and excuse me for the troubles.

I can confirm that in general, Hard Disk Sentinel should never use high amount of CPU, as it is designed to work with very low resources even on older systems.

Did you check with the latest version of Hard Disk Sentinel (if you previously installed on older one)?
Not sure, but it is possible that one of its data files may be corrupted somehow - and this causes troubles.

Personally I'd recommend to try this:

- Completely close Hard Disk Sentinel (if running) by File -> Exit
- Download the latest Hard Disk Sentinel Professional Portable version from http://www.harddisksentinel.com/hdsenti ... rtable.zip
and extract to a new, completely empty folder.
- Launch HDSentinel.exe from this folder

Then the latest Portable version will run, independently from the installed version (so does not use any settings, statistics, registration details or so).

Please check if the issue happens with that and if so, WHEN the CPU usage increases, for example:
- immediately after startup (even during the registration-reminder window displayed)
- after you close the registration-reminder window
- after some time of usage (eg. some seconds / minutes)
- after opening the Configuration window and/or using some features
etc...

These may give ideas about what can be wrong and how to improve the situation.

Also the best would be if you use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, as then it is possible to check the actual situation and advise.

[shneor]

Thank you for your response.
I believe it's not just HDSentinel, anything that tries to access smart seems to cause the problem.
Wish I knew how to change that, probably in the registry.

Shneor

[hdsentinel]

Generally, S.M.A.R.T. access is usually quick and not resource intensive operation, it should not take high amount of CPU power.
The problem may be more related to a device and/or a device driver which may respond slower than expected - and while waiting for response, you may see high CPU utilisation.

Also Hard Disk Sentinel checks S.M.A.R.T. only once per every 5 minutes by default, so between these detection cycles there should be low CPU usage - if the high usage would be related to S.M.A.R.T. check / update.

I suspect it is something different, if you use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, then it may give ideas about how to improve the situation.

Ps. did you try system restore to restore your configuration to previous state when things worked fine?
Yes, then you may need to re-install Comodo - but if things happen again the same way, we can be sure that Comodo is causing troubles.

[shneor]

No, I did not do a system restore. What I do know is that after the Comodo upgrade, things changed. I did not create a restore point prior to upgrading Comodo Firewall (which should have had no effect on smart access). That's why I think there must have been a change to the registry somewhere.

Oh well.

Shneor

[hdsentinel]

Usually, system restore points may be created by the OS automatically for certain dates / events, so it is worth to check if you have a previous system restore point (before that update).

Not sure, but Comodo may have added a special driver or so which causes the higher CPU usage on your system when the hard disk in general (or when S.M.A.R.T. only) accessed.

From the developer report, maybe I can see what happens - but without it, I also have no real ideas....

Just for a test: try to restart the system and press F8 during bootup and from the Windows startup menu, please select "safe mode".
Then most drivers / applications will not be loaded by Windows.

Please start manually Hard Disk Sentinel in this mode and verify if the CPU usage is so high then.
If not, it will confirm that something (eg. a driver, application - may or may not be related to Comodo) which loaded only in "normal" mode - but not in "safe" mode can be in the background.