Rhythmic blinking HDD light not caused by Autoplay?

I thought the only cause for a perpetual rhythmic blinking HDD
light is Autoplay. But all of my Autoplay settings are "Take no
action". I would suspect System Monitor, but it's not
automatically started and it's not running.

It isn't necessarily once per second, but that's the average.
Sometimes it's just a flicker. Other times it's more obvious.

Thanks.

John Doe wrote:
I thought the only cause for a perpetual rhythmic blinking HDD
light is Autoplay. But all of my Autoplay settings are "Take no
action". I would suspect System Monitor, but it's not
automatically started and it's not running.

It isn't necessarily once per second, but that's the average.
Sometimes it's just a flicker. Other times it's more obvious.

Thanks.

What does Sysinternals Process Monitor say ?
Do a trace with filtering undefined, so you
can see everything.

The OS can do a fairly large number of (repetitive)
Registry reads per second. That shouldn't cause
the LED to flash. But perhaps if you see
specific I/O's going to some other storage
device, you'll get some idea where it's coming from.

Paul

Paul nospam needed.com wrote:

John Doe wrote:

I thought the only cause for a perpetual rhythmic blinking HDD
light is Autoplay. But all of my Autoplay settings are "Take no
action". I would suspect System Monitor, but it's not
automatically started and it's not running.

It isn't necessarily once per second, but that's the average.
Sometimes it's just a flicker. Other times it's more obvious.

What does Sysinternals Process Monitor say ?

Yeah, you're right, that's the tool.





Do a trace with filtering undefined, so you
can see everything.

The OS can do a fairly large number of (repetitive)
Registry reads per second. That shouldn't cause
the LED to flash. But perhaps if you see
specific I/O's going to some other storage
device, you'll get some idea where it's coming from.

Paul

On 04/06/2014 17:56, John Doe wrote:
I thought the only cause for a perpetual rhythmic blinking HDD
light is Autoplay. But all of my Autoplay settings are "Take no
action". I would suspect System Monitor, but it's not
automatically started and it's not running.

It isn't necessarily once per second, but that's the average.
Sometimes it's just a flicker. Other times it's more obvious.

Thanks.

If you have an optical drive attached there will be flashing
(indicating access by the storage controller to a device) and
there is no known way of turning that off, other than
disabling the optical drive in device manager, then re-enabling
it when you want to use it.
Try it.
There have been lots of threads about this all over the web
over many years. It's not fixable by tweaking any windows settings,
services or registry values.
--
Rob

Wolf K wolfmac sympatico.ca wrote:

Rob wrote:
John Doe wrote:

I thought the only cause for a perpetual rhythmic blinking HDD
light is Autoplay. But all of my Autoplay settings are "Take
no action". I would suspect System Monitor, but it's not
automatically started and it's not running.

It isn't necessarily once per second, but that's the average.
Sometimes it's just a flicker. Other times it's more obvious.

If you have an optical drive attached there will be flashing
(indicating access by the storage controller to a device) and
there is no known way of turning that off, other than disabling
the optical drive in device manager, then re-enabling it when
you want to use it. Try it. There have been lots of threads
about this all over the web over many years. It's not fixable
by tweaking any windows settings, services or registry values.

The OS "polls" attached devices at regular intervals, is all.
Nothing to worry about.

In my case, after applying Process Monitor, the culprit appears to
be Dragon NaturallySpeaking. But I'm moving back to Windows 8, so
maybe it don't matter.

On 10/06/2014 18:03, Wolf K wrote:
On 2014-06-10 11:35 AM, Rob wrote:
On 04/06/2014 17:56, John Doe wrote:
I thought the only cause for a perpetual rhythmic blinking HDD
light is Autoplay. But all of my Autoplay settings are "Take no
action". I would suspect System Monitor, but it's not
automatically started and it's not running.

It isn't necessarily once per second, but that's the average.
Sometimes it's just a flicker. Other times it's more obvious.

Thanks.

If you have an optical drive attached there will be flashing
(indicating access by the storage controller to a device) and
there is no known way of turning that off, other than
disabling the optical drive in device manager, then re-enabling
it when you want to use it.
Try it.
There have been lots of threads about this all over the web
over many years. It's not fixable by tweaking any windows settings,
services or registry values.

The OS "polls" attached devices at regular intervals, is all. Nothing to
worry about.

Exactly. It's more of an annoyance than anything else, a bit
like the way the power LED flashes constantly when in sleep
mode on some motherboards. Not good in a bedroom, but easily
cured by non-IT means. :-)
--
Rob

Rob noone nowhere.noway.con wrote:

On 10/06/2014 18:03, Wolf K wrote:
On 2014-06-10 11:35 AM, Rob wrote:
On 04/06/2014 17:56, John Doe wrote:

I thought the only cause for a perpetual rhythmic blinking HDD
light is Autoplay. But all of my Autoplay settings are "Take no
action". I would suspect System Monitor, but it's not
automatically started and it's not running.

It isn't necessarily once per second, but that's the average.
Sometimes it's just a flicker. Other times it's more obvious.

If you have an optical drive attached there will be flashing
(indicating access by the storage controller to a device) and
there is no known way of turning that off, other than
disabling the optical drive in device manager, then re-enabling
it when you want to use it.
Try it.
There have been lots of threads about this all over the web
over many years. It's not fixable by tweaking any windows settings,
services or registry values.

The OS "polls" attached devices at regular intervals, is all. Nothing to
worry about.

Exactly.

FWIW... No, it's not, exactly. As I said, in this situation, it
boiled down to NaturallySpeaking doing something with the hard
drive.

From Procmon.exe...

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3865/...92a467_o_d.png

--







It's more of an annoyance than anything else, a bit
like the way the power LED flashes constantly when in sleep
mode on some motherboards. Not good in a bedroom, but easily
cured by non-IT means. :-)
--
Rob


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From: Rob noone nowhere.noway.con
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.windows7.general
Subject: Rhythmic blinking HDD light not caused by Autoplay?
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2014 16:40:53 +0100
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