Blinking Disk Activity Light

Not interested in talking about a dead horse or producing a movie : Just wanted answers from people who truly had input that Dell could not provide!I Appreciate  any suggestion that I receive and suggest that gophers with critic attitudes  go somewhere else and type away!! Thanks to those who truly had input that counted

I stand corrected...  In XP    Open CONTROL PANEL  Select SYSTEM...  HARDWARE...  DEVICE MANAGER... and select the CD/DVD devices.  Expand the menu to include all your CD devices.  Right-click on each CD/DVD device and select DISABLE.  (You can reverse this and ENABLE the devices after the test - this must be accomplished before you reboot your computer.)   It appears that the devices are disabled the moment you confirm that you wish to disable them.

 

Randerso2,

  No - I do not work for Dell.  If you scan the forums for my ID, you will find that I have had my share of problems with Dell too.  I simply have had the opportunity to experience the good and the bad over many years and wanted to prevent others from getting the same scars and burns. 

Sorry  Bobtt, Ijust got caught up in the moment with the reply from Robnalex. I appreciate your comment and will try to get back on track Thanks

blink blink blink 

That's It!!! Thanks Bobtt

I can stop the blinking by disabling just the DVD+RW drive. The DVD-ROM drive does not seem to make a difference.  In XP I could not successfully disable the autorun feature (only configure for various actions) - however completely disabling the device in device manager does in fact stop the blinking. This may explain why I do not see this on work computers - no DVD+RW drives. Anyway, now that I know what is causing the blinking I can learn to live with it. 

Thanks to all who responded.

 

I can appreciate the satisfaction in identifying the cause, but disabling your DVD+RW drive doesn't exactly seem like a solution. And why do other machines (like mine) with both DVD-ROM and DVD+RW both enabled NOT have the blinking light issue?

This is not a problem for Dells alone.

If you google with flashes, flashing, flickers, and flickering with activity light, you will find many others with the problem. Blinks, or blinking is not the word of choice for the phenomenum.

Below are a few links as examples. It tried them all. As I indicated in an earlier post, the problem is with the secondary IDE controller to my DVD and CD drives. aT

The first one allows you to turn of the auto-run feature without disabling the drive. (TAKE PRECAUTIONS WHEN MODIFYING THE REGISTRY!!!!!)

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread/t-39763.html

http://www.techsupportforum.com/computer/topic/9475-1.html

http://www.mcse.ms/message45259.html

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=fVRAhj*g&p_lva=&p_faqid=243&p_created=1017267674&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTMmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1hY3Rpdml0eSBsaWdodCZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPTQmcF9wcm9kX2x2bDE9OTEmcF9wcm9kX2x2bDI9fmFueX4mcF9jYXRfbHZsMT0yNyZwX3NvcnRfYnk9ZGZsdCZwX3BhZ2U9MQ**&p_li=

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;138598

http://uk.geocities.com/teksupp4u/faq/drives.html#general1

Robnalex,
My intent to disable the drive(s) is not a solution. This is merely a test to identify the root cause of the blinking light. From there, you can make a decision "to live with it" or not.

"Troubleshooting is an art form"

Got it.

We have an answer folks.  I will just summarize what we know so that this Forum discussion thread can come to closure.  To find out why our hard drive light continually blinks we ruled out all of the following: disk indexing activity, anti-virus programs, network activity, and all such tasks that may be running in the background and accessing the hard drive.  Remember, the symptom was an extremely constant blink, for about a quarter of a second, repeating approx. each second.  One of the contributors to this discussion suggested that it was the system checking the CD or DVD drives for an inserted disk as part of the "autorun" feature.  This polling of the CD or DVD drive is actioned through the hard drive controller.  We found that by disabling autorun, the problem almost completely went away.  Almost completely, because there is a second cause happening simultaneously. 

 In the HKLM_Software_Microsoft_Windows_CurrentVersion_Run registry keys, there is a TSR applet installed by Dell called "DSentry".  This ALSO causes hard drive blinking because it is polling your DVD drive to see if a disk is inserted.  DSentry was added by Dell to prevent spyware programs on movie DVDs purchased from mass distributors from sending info on what movie you are watching to their database via the internet.  So I commend Dell for adding this, but I scold them for not telling anyone about it, esp. not their technical support people.  DSentry.exe causes a very short (10th of a second) blink about every two seconds.  If you delete that key, and have autorun disabled, the entire problem is resolved.  I am appalled that absolutely no one at Dell technical support knew the answers to our questions.  Neither of these issues is documented anywhere.  It seems like Dell technical support does not have the ability to say "I don't know".  Instead of researching the issue, they make up a factitious answer.  The response I got from them on the phone was: "You have a high-end machine and in those XPS machines the hard drive light is really an input/output monitor, so it is blinking not only from hard drive activity but from network activity."  That was just a made up answer, it has no basis behind it.  As I had mentioned in a previous post to this discussion thread, if this was such a desirable feature, how come Dell does not tell the customers about how "wonderful" it is?  How come it is not documented anywhere?  We now know the answer, and we had to figure it out by trial and error.  For those of you who still have the eternal blinking problem, there is more than one way to disable the Autorun feature.  You can find instructions on the Microsoft Windows XP Knowledgebase, and in the O'Reilly books, and on many computer enthusiast and self-help web sites.  Best regards to all .... Joel.

 

Sounds like you've found the problem.  It appears that the Dell Dsentry software is the root cause of the blinking anomaly.  I've worked on many non-DELL motherboards with the AUTORUN option enabled (W98, W2K, and WXP), and I see NO blinking light. 

Actually, there is no need for Dsentry if you have a firewall.  The firewall would alert the user to the spyware program when it attempts to connect to the internet.  Again, we have a case where BIG BROTHER DELL modifies the OS without communicating it to the user.  And I don't blame low-paid under-trained tech supports for making up answers to the problem.

To be fair to DELL, HP is much worse.  HP's recovery data is stored on the HD.  Again, those blasted beancounters are trying to save 50 cents per unit.  You're scr_wed if your HD goes south and you haven't created those recovery CDs from the back-up partition.  There are many cases when folks ended up reformatting their PCs after two years of use.  Then they were told by HP that they can no longer purchase recovery CDs.  The only solution is to buy a new operating system!

In the end, if you want a standardized PC at reasonable cost, then you go with a decent local PC builder.

F.

Joel, thank you for the all the info.  I can't wait to try it out, unfortunately the PC I was having trouble with was my girlfriend's and it's at her house right now or I would have done it already to see the results.  As soon as I do I will report back to this thread. 

Yea what's funny regarding the Autorun stuff is she had a really old Que! CD-RW burner in her old system, which the light would blink on the CD-RW exactly like the Dell HD light, which used to annoy me too no end also, but I just thought it was a cheap drive and just told her to live with it or get a better burner.  I never thought to disable autorun because she needs that type of feature on. 

When I was fixing up her Dell I put the Que! burner in and the CDrom blip would blip at the exact same time as this annoying HD light blip.  They were perfectly in sync - so it was double the trouble!  I ended up giving her a different burner for the Dell and I took her Que! one back out and put it in one of my PCs.  Strangely enough it did not blink in my built from scratch box.  But the HD light on the Dell kept going, but the new burner didn't blink.  That is about the time I hit this forum.

The moral of all of the above is this polling activity is obviously the problem in conjunction with this spyware dectector thing running in the bg.  I actually don't think it's cool Dell put this feature in, especially since it's not documented anywhere and they can't tell anyone who calls about it.  If you plan on disabling that and are worried about what it was protecting, download AdAware 6.0 (it's free) and scan your system for spyware.  You don't need Dell to be doing it behind the scenes for you every 1 second.  ;)  Can't wait to try and fix it!

Now We understood cause of the Blinking Disk Activity Light problem but It is not  easy solution due to Dell's PC design matter.  I do not want to disable Auto Run for my CD/DVD and very unhappy with Light Blinking with clicking noise every few second.    Dell should come out this Forum and Explain the situation.

I would like hear more information until giving up(leave it with) this problem It looks like Dell made a Great PC in the World with poor Design and Lack of Customer Support.   Do any one has Idea that No blinking with CDR/DVD autorun turn on?   My old PC PII-233 Mhz with CDR did not have this problem.  

Please Post more information.

Kangs