Unwanted interaction between CCleaner and DiskLED

[Willy2]

I have a program called "DiskLED" ( https://helgeklein.com/free-tools/diskled/ ) running on my laptop. This program displays an icon in the system tray. It can programmed to show how much activity there is on my laptop using one of the several "Performance Counters" available in Windows. I have programmed the icon to show the amount of disk I/O for both the C: (internal SSD drive) E: drive (external SSD drive) using "\Total bytes written/read" (????). But the odd thing is that this icon only shows the disk I/O for drive E: but NOT the disk I/O for drive C:.

However, when I also start CCleaner then DiskLED shows the amount of Disk I/O for BOTH drive C: and E:. So, it seems that CCleaner changes something in the registry (????) or in the performance counters and that makes DiskLED work again.

My question right now is a technical question:  What in CCleaner is responsible for this change in behaviour in DiskLED ? I hope someone of the Ccleaner staff is willing to give an answer. This behaviour forces me to have Ccleaner running all the time and that's something I "don't like".

[Willy2]

To be clear: I would like to make DiskLED to work for drive C: again and NOT have CCleaner run all the time.

DiskLED uses something from the performance monitor ("perfmon.exe"). See also the red arrows in the picture (in the GUI of DiskLED, "DiskLED configuration"). This is the dutch version of the lines in the "Performance Counters/Monitor." ("Perfmon.exe"). The english translation is (something along the lines of) "Physical drive(Total)\Written and read bytes per second".

The second picture shows how DiskLED shows up in the system tray (red rectangle). The blue arrow points to the CCleaner button on the Task Bar and that shows that CCleaner is running.

 

 

[nukecad]

7 hours ago, Willy2 said:

 ... the odd thing is that this icon only shows the disk I/O for drive E: but NOT the disk I/O for drive C:.

However, when I also start CCleaner then DiskLED shows the amount of Disk I/O for BOTH drive C: and E:.

So you seem to be saying that Diskled does not work how you want it to unless CCleaner is also running.

Surely that is a problem either with Diskled itself, or (more likely) with your settings in Diskled?

From what you say then if you didn't have CCleaner at all Diskled wouldn't work how you want it to, full stop, and not everybody has CCleaner.

[Willy2]

I simply want to know what CCleaner changes to make this program (DiskLED) work again. Is this a registry tweak ? Perhaps CC applies this tweak to make the CC progam code work better. It's also clear that once the user closes CC this change (registry tweak (???)) is "reversed" and the DiskLED doesn't work that well anymore.

[nukecad]

I doubt that it's a registry key, programmes don't normally create/change reg keys on opening and then delete them on closing.
If/when they do create/change one they usually leave it there.

Is it only with CCleaner?
Try doing a scan with Defender to see if Diskled shows C: being accessed while the scan is running.

[Willy2]

Tried a number of things but to no avail. The only thing that makes DiskLED work again is start running CCleaner.

[rofoun]

I seriously doubt CCleaner has some direct role in this. The only thing I can think of is that it might generate some disk activity when running but so do virtually all running programs. But the correlation sounds interesting indeed.

I didn't quite get from your description what's the actual difference between the desired state of DiskLED (i.e. when CCleaner is running) and the undesired state (i.e. when CCleaner is not running). Is the tray icon missing completely? Is it showing something it shouldn't be showing? What does it mean exactly that it shows activity only for one drive?

[Willy2]

Let me elaborate:

 - DiskLED makes an icon show up in the system tray.

- This icon is supposed to "light up" (in red), for a very brief moment, everytime when there is any disk I/O on both the C: or E: drive on my laptop. But it fails to work without CCleaner running. The icon remains black/dark. When CC is running then DiskLED does work like it should.

- This uses a line (in dutch, not english) from the "Performance Monitor" (a program called "Perfmon.exe" in the "C:\Windows\ system32" or c:\windows\syswow64" folder). Don't know what the precise english wording is for this dutch line. I thought/think I used/am using the proper line (from "Perfmon.exe").

- Of course, the user can select another line from "Perfmon.exe".

- I tried to fix this by trying to repair the performance counters (with Tweakings' Windows Repair) but to no avail.

[Willy2]

I'll show what I selected in the dutch version of "Perfmon.exe".

See the picture below:

- I open "Perfmon.exe", select "+" and then a windows opens (red rectangles + red arrows)
- There I selected "Geschreven en Gelezen bytes per seconde" (= "written and read bytes per second"). See the green arrow.
- This counter/line is used in DiskLED as well (blue arrows).

[rofoun]

Did you try to generate some heavy disk activity like copying a large file?

Does it behave the same with a different counter? What you're using is a bit odd setup imo. Transferred bytes per seconds will be a number in the order of millions (megabytes) and DiskLED will be applying a scale between 0 and 1 to it, so the result will be always red. Could you maybe try some percentage based counter like % Disk Time? Then if you set the "100% utilization" in DiskLED to 100, the number from the counter will fit in the scale and you should also see some green / orange. I checked the code and the thresholds are: no color for 0, green up to 25%, yellow up to 50%, orange up to 75% and red for anything above. Then try to copy some larger file and see if the icon does something (without CCleaner running).