Black window after HDD died

[drkenreid]

Hi all - my drivepool on Win11 is just showing a black window ever since one of my HDDs died due to a power surge. I can technically use drivepool because when I hover over where the buttons are, I sometimes see popup bubbles giving additional information (e.g. HDD information), but it's not actually usable in a real sense. I raised a ticket via contact us but after a week I've not had a response. 

I've tried:

1. Restarting machine
2. Repairing drivepool
3. Reinstalling drivepool
4. Windows update
5. Graphics card update
6. Launching as admin, and compatibility mode for other versions of Windows
7. Maximizing, moving the window around, minimizing and reopening. 

Any help would be MUCH appreciated. I'd really rather not have to reinstall windows, considering its my media server and local LLM server, with a lot of customization...

[Shane]

The options I'd try at that point are:

The DISM and SFC verification/repair process.

Resetting the NTFS permissions for the pool: https://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/5810-ntfs-permissions-and-drivepool/#findComment-34550

A "clean"-er reinstall of DrivePool:

• deactivate the drivepool license on the machine
• uninstall drivepool, reboot
• delete the following folders if still present
  • "C:\Program Files\StableBit\DrivePool\"
  • "C:\ProgramData\StableBit DrivePool\"
  • "C:\Users\*\AppData\Roaming\StableBit DrivePool\"
• reinstall drivepool
• reactivate the drivepool license on the machine
• reinput your preferred configuration settings (and disabling the read striping until they fix the bug).

I hope one of the above helps.

 

[drkenreid]

Hi Christopher, I just saw your response to my request for support through the ticketing system too. Thanks. I have followed your advice and it's now working. Specifically, editing the registry key.

Thank you all, we can consider this solved.

[drkenreid]

Hi @Shane - thank you muchly for your advice. I followed it, the DISM process didn't find anything though SFC sad it conducted repairs, so I was hopeful. I tried resetting the NTFS permissions but apparently I have tens of thousands of stubborn files refusing to change and I couldn't bare to hit "continue" after the first 12 or so, so I had to give up that step.

I did the full reinstall of drivepool following your instructions. I couldn't access the software to deactivate the drivepool license sadly. The \Program Files\ folder deleted itself upon uninstall, the other two I deleted manually. I restarted, reinstalled, and as attached I now have two black windows. It seems to have reset the settings (I even have a request to activate popping up which I can read) but the main windows are still black. No other software exhibits this behavior.

Any further advice very welcome. My plex server is currently unusable without drivepool and I have about 12 friends and family pestering me daily to try and fix it 😅

Thanks again, @Shane! 

[Shane]

"I tried resetting the NTFS permissions but apparently I have tens of thousands of stubborn files refusing to change and I couldn't bare to hit "continue" after the first 12 or so, so I had to give up that step."

Did you run the SetACL commands as an administrator? Did you try it on the individual poolparts? If so and you still got the errors, can you please post the error message?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Do you have MSI Afterburner installed, or otherwise are overclocking your GPU?   If so, it can cause this sort of behavior.

Also, using Remote Desktop (or sometimes, remote access software) can cause this to happen, too.

Specifically, in cases like this, the issue usually is with the GPU, as .NET Framework uses hardware accerleration for the graphics (which our software uses).  You can disable this per app by renaming the "C:\Program Files\StableBit\DrivePool\DrivePool.UI.exe.default.config" to "DrivePool.UI.exe.config" (in the same folder), and setting the "SoftwareOnlyRendering" value to "True", saving the file and re-opening the UI (make sure it's not running in Task Manager, first).

You can also disable the hardware accerleration globally: 
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/wpf/graphics-multimedia/graphics-rendering-registry-settings?view=netframeworkdesktop-4.8#disable-hardware-acceleration-option

Specifically, the "DisableHWAcceleration" value, and setting this to 1 and rebooting.