Auto launching when it shouldn't, Slow startup at boot and crashing

[doveman]

I'm using the latest beta but I've had this slow startup problem for a while now.

If I launch it manually after booting has finished, it loads quick as anything but if it loads automatically at boot, it shows "Initialising Kernel Driver" for a few seconds, then moves on to "Analysing devices" and then doesn't move until everything else has finished loading.

On my last boot though, Windows told me it had crashed and to close it. I had debugging enabled so I've attached that. I've disabled Drive Scan, EC Support, Evaluate ACPI methods and Audio Codec Check to see if they'd help with the slow startup at boot. Launching manually with those options and it doesn't crash.

The other problem I have is that it's launching at boot and I can't find any way to stop it. I've got Auto Start unticked and I can't find any registry entry in Run that's launching it. I can't find any HwInfo service either. I even uninstalled it, rebooted (when it obviously couldn't autostart) and then reinstalled it and now it's autostarting again.

EDIT: Ah, I see it's using a Scheduled Task to autorun, so hopefully disabling that will stop it.

 

[Cmp_Cmndo]

...If I launch it manually after booting has finished, it loads quick as anything but if it loads automatically at boot, it shows "Initialising Kernel Driver" for a few seconds, then moves on to "Analysing devices" and then doesn't move until everything else has finished loading...

So, I'm not the only one! Exactly the same for me.
Using latest released version. No crash.
Not a terribly fast machine, i.e. Pentium-D desktop with WinXP-Pro.
Not as noticeable on Corei3 laptop with Win7-64.

 

[doveman]

I'm running an Athlon II X4 630 (2.8Ghz) with 8GB RAM and Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, in case that makes any difference.

 

[Martin]

If you want to avoid the delay during "Initialising Kernel Driver", please enable the "Persistent Driver" option.
As for the delay during "Analyzing Devices...", I'm afraid, I don't have a solution for this yet. It seems HWiNFO queries certain information which probably isn't available until certain services are started. Maybe try to add a start delay using Task Scheduler.

 

[PhotM]

Hi Martin & Gentlemen,

I am running a fast PC with Sandy Bridge and you may have seen me report the slow startup earlier, as well.
doveman, has HWiNFO truly crashed or does it provide you with a "WAIT" option. If I hit a key when the cursor is on the same screen and the HWiNFO Status Bar, Windows will sometimes give the "Not Responding"/"WAIT". I always click "WAIT" because it is only the "GUI/Status Bar" that is "Not Responding", Not HWiNFO, herself. I haven't seen HWiNFO actually "Crash" for a very, very long time now, on W 7 SP 1, W 8.0, W 8.1 Pro or ENT.

Hope this helps Martin, Gentlemen,

Best Regards,

Crysta

 

[doveman]

The kernel driver delay isn't actually anything to worry about, it's the "Analysing Devices" one that's the problem. I'll see if I can add a delay though. Maybe you could look at using a service to launch it, as that could be set to Automatic (Delayed) which seems to delay it until everything else has finished loading.

It also seems a bit wierd that the Task isn't disabled when the Auto Start option is, or that it wasn't removed by uninstalling (unless re-installing automatically creates the task again but I don't think it should as Auto-Start isn't enabled by default).

---

doveman, has HWiNFO truly crashed or does it provide you with a "WAIT" option.

It did say Not Responding for a while but then the Windows error box came up saying it had crashed. Maybe disabling some of those options isn't a good idea for my system (even though when launched manually it didn't crash).

 

[Martin]

Thanks Crysta, you described it very well. But as doveman says, it seems it was a real crash. I have checked the Debug File, but haven't found anything suspicious there.. Maybe watch and see if this occurs again.

As I said earlier, I don't think there's anything I can do about the delay during "Analyzing Devices...". Try if you can set a start delay using Task Scheduler.

 

[Cmp_Cmndo]

Just booted up my Corei3 Sandy Bridge.
No HWInfo tray icon though the process was running. Ended the process & restarted. I've seen this happen once before.
Maybe need to check "Persistent Driver"?

 

[doveman]

Hmm, I just tried setting a delay of 2 minutes (Windows takes about 113s to finish booting so that should be adequate) and tried to manually run the task.

The window came up immediately, so I don't think the delay applies when running tasks manually but it got stuck on "flushing buffers". I killed it eventually. I thought I'd attached the DBG for that but hadn't realised it had rejected it, so I've lost that one I'm afraid.

Ran it again and it got through "flushing buffers" this time but then got stuck on "analysing devices". (DBG2 in zip)

If I run HwInfo64 from my desktop icon though, it works fine (DBG3 in zip), so it seems the Task is doing something funky to it!

I turned off the delay again but it doesn't make any difference. In fact, it got stuck on "flushing buffers" again after this but it's not making a DBG anymore, even if it gets to "analysing devices".

I still don't understand what the "Auto Start" option is for if there's a task setup that autoruns HwInfo at boot anyway.

---

This is interesting. If I put the HwInfo shortcut icon in Start Menu - Start instead of using Task Scheduler, it looks like it gets stuck on "Analysing Devices" still but appears to be proceeding in the background, as suddenly it finishes loading without the rest of the progress messages appearing. It loads tons faster this way, perhaps a little slower than manually launching it after Windows has finished booting but that's to be expected as it's loading loads of other stuff at the same time.

 

[Martin]

Flushing Buffers can take some time on systems which have large amounts of unwritten data in disk buffers, or on SSDs/flash drives. But there's an option in HWiNFO to disable this, so you can avoid it.
As for the Debug Files you produced, neither of them shows any kind of hang (not even DBG2) - HWiNFO properly went thru the entire scan process and has been in the monitoring phase when closed. So I don't think it was really stuck somewhere in the scan process. The question is how long have you been waiting for HWiNFO to finish when you got the impression that it takes too long?
Maybe the Task Scheduler does something to the GUI that causes it not to update/display properly the actual status ?

The "Auto Start" option in fact creates the Task Scheduler task on Windows Vista/7/8 which autoruns HWiNFO at system start. This is the only way there how to autostart an application and avoiding the UAC prompt.

 

[PhotM]

Just booted up my Corei3 Sandy Bridge.
No HWInfo tray icon though the process was running. Ended the process & restarted. I've seen this happen once before.
Maybe need to check "Persistent Driver"?

Every so often various icons are missing in the system tray. sometimes restarting explorer.exe will help. I use "System Explorer" to manage this.

Crysta

 

[Martin]

This is interesting. If I put the HwInfo shortcut icon in Start Menu - Start instead of using Task Scheduler, it looks like it gets stuck on "Analysing Devices" still but appears to be proceeding in the background, as suddenly it finishes loading without the rest of the progress messages appearing. It loads tons faster this way, perhaps a little slower than manually launching it after Windows has finished booting but that's to be expected as it's loading loads of other stuff at the same time.

Indeed, that's interesting. I guess there's something weird happening when starting using Task Scheduler. Maybe try again using Task Scheduler and various options that are available there?

 

[Cmp_Cmndo]

...Every so often various icons are missing in the system tray. sometimes restarting explorer.exe will help. I use "System Explorer" to manage this...

Microsoft Security Essentials icon was missing, too.
I'll have to try "System Explorer".
I wonder if "Classic Shell" is interfering in any way?

 

[doveman]

Flushing Buffers can take some time on systems which have large amounts of unwritten data in disk buffers, or on SSDs/flash drives. But there's an option in HWiNFO to disable this, so you can avoid it.
As for the Debug Files you produced, neither of them shows any kind of hang (not even DBG2) - HWiNFO properly went thru the entire scan process and has been in the monitoring phase when closed. So I don't think it was really stuck somewhere in the scan process. The question is how long have you been waiting for HWiNFO to finish when you got the impression that it takes too long?
Maybe the Task Scheduler does something to the GUI that causes it not to update/display properly the actual status ?

The "Auto Start" option in fact creates the Task Scheduler task on Windows Vista/7/8 which autoruns HWiNFO at system start. This is the only way there how to autostart an application and avoiding the UAC prompt.

It was definitely stuck as HwInfoMonitor wasn't receiving any data and the progress bar was stuck on screen and I had to kill it. As I say, if I launch it manually with the icon, it loads nice and quickly, so it's definitely running with the Task Scheduler that's causing it to get stuck. I waited long enough for it to have proceeded. Perhaps though the DBGs I uploaded were the same old one from launching it manually earlier, as after uploading them and deleting the DBG I found that it wasn't creating it when running the task.

If the Auto Start option creates the Task, shouldn't unticking it remove/disable it?

 

[Martin]

If the Auto Start option creates the Task, shouldn't unticking it remove/disable it?

Yes, it should remove it from Task Scheduler.

 

[doveman]

Yes, it should remove it from Task Scheduler.

Hmm, well it doesn't seem to work here. No big deal, I can disable it manually and just launch it from Start menu.

 

[Martin]

I have tried to reproduce these problems several times, but I can't - it works properly for me (quick autostart, removing of scheduler task when "Auto Start" is disabled in HWiNFO). So it's hard to diagnose it. Maybe it depends on your machine + HWiNFO configuration, so the only advice I can make now is to try to check HWiNFO properties in the Task Scheduler...

 

[doveman]

Fair enough, thanks for testing anyway.

On my most recent boot, using the Start menu to autorun it, it only showed "Initialising Kernel Driver" until everything else had finished loading and then jumped straight to the finish, with HwInfoMonitor showing the sensors. I know it was obviously progressing in the background and just the progress bar wasn't updating but as I have "Persistent Driver" enabled, should this message even appear, or does it appear anyway but zip past normally with "Persistent Driver" enabled. I've noticed that even if I have "Drive Scan" disabled or "GPU I2C Support" disabled, it still shows messages (when launched manually so that the progress bar proceeds normally) about the drives/SMART and GPU/Nvidia/Ati in the progress bar, so I suspect the messages shown are the same whatever's is enabled/disabled but it just skips those actual scans.

 

[Martin]

Yes, if those items are disabled, the progress bar will show the labels, but should proceed much faster (depending on each machine).

 

[PhotM]

I still keep wondering, is the progress bar that important to be displayed? Isn't that what logs are for? It would be quite something if everything that runs at startup had a progress bar.

Just saying.....

Have a great day/night,

Crysta