DriveGLEAM V1.11
Copyright © 2005,2006,2007,2008,2009 -,2010,2011 Svein Engelsgjerd

DriveGLEAM - USERS GUIDE:
( Also valid for DriveGLEAM V1.0, V1.01 V1.02, V1.03, V1.04, V1.05, V1.06 V1.07 V1.08 V1.09 V1.10 and V1.11 )
Last updated: 26.April.2012

Index:

0. Disclaimer
1. Introduction
2. Usage
3. Known issues
4. Scheduled features
5. Tips and tricks
6. The parallell port
7. Technical info
8. Support
9. Alternative tools

Introduction:

DriveGLEAM is a harddrive activity indicator and also include built in extensions for monitoring CPU and memory load. It works by immitating the harddrive LED on screen. This is a very useful if your computer case is hidden (under the table) or on another physical location (remote desktop). DriveGLEAM features independent indicators for each drive or partition and allows you to monitor both read and write access. As a option DriveGLEAM allows for external output (via the parallel port) so it will be possible to build a LED panel for monitoring your hard-drives with real physical LED's. The difference between the build in HDD access LED on your computer case and DriveGLEAM external ones is that DriveGLEAM allows for independent colored LED's for read or write access. DriveGLEAM can also use your keyboard's scroll lock LED as a activity indicator.
DriveGLEAM is known as a robust and fast application. It's also very resourcefriendly and does not require a install or other external files with the exception of inpoup32.dll (in DriveGLEAM's directory) if you want to use external output for your indicators. DriveGLEAM does not install behind the scene drivers or 'hook' into your system and will thus not reduce your overall system performance. As a bonus a potential failure can't corrupt your hard-drive(s) content or should not be able to halt your system. For the technical minded people DriveGLEAM is written in 100% C for maximum performance.

DriveGLEAM works with the following versions of Windows:
2k, XP, 2k3, Vista, 7 Beta (you might have to adjust the settings for the notification are in Win 7 Beta)

Due to other projects and the fact that DriveGLEAM works well like it is for most users it's not beeing worked on regulary. However this does NOT mean that there is no activity on the future developement of DriveGLEAM. Feel free to toss in a few feature request or anything else you have on your mind here http://forum.dirtcellar.net

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Usage:

Graphical user interface
WARNING: This screenshot is outdated

One example of tray icons
Tray1
Colors are RED = write, GREEN = read, YELLOW = read+write and finaly BLUE = idle

Alternative icon set
 Tray2
Colors are RED = write, GREEN = read. - Dim colors means that the drive's been idle.

The mainwindow allows for configuring DriveGLEAM to suit your needs.

 Monitoring:
There you can select what drives (or physical drives) you want to monitor for read/write access. Also shown are some usefull information to help you identify your volume such as volumename, free space (in %) and if the drive is set to be displayed in the system notification area (tray), on the parallel port or both.

 Options:
Show in tray: If selected will show a tray icon with read/write information on the selected drive.
Output to parallel port: If selected you can select what dataline(s) on the parallel port is to be set high on a read, write or both.

 Global options:
Start with os: Makes DriveGLEAM automatically start with the rest of the system.
Delay seconds: Allows you to specify a delay before DriveGLEAM starts monitoring and / or display icons in tray. Usefull if you don't want DriveGLEAM's icons to mix up with other trayicons.
Alternate icon: Makes DriveGLEAM display alternative tray icons.
Single icon mode: Makes DriveGLEAM group all read/writes into a single icon. the CPU/RAM/VRAM icons are not shown in this mode.
KeyboardLED: Flash ScrollLock on your keyboard to indicate drive activity. (WARNING simulate a REAL keypress - may mess up some applications)
Static icon: If you are in single icon mode you may stop updating the tray icons (useful for keyboard LED monitoring)
 Poll interval ms: Allows you to configure the pause between each refresh.

Multil CPU monitoring:
 Multi CPU monitoring: If this box is unchecked it will combine the activity of all cores in the first CPU icon.
Due to a bug in the userinterface you have to only select the primary CPU for monitoring unless you want a useless icon for each of your CPU's in the tray.
Other buttons:
Start: Starts or restarts monitoring.
Stop. Stops monitoring
(From DriveGLEAM V1.03 and up there's just a enable/disable button)
Online help: This documentation
 About: About DriveGLEAM
Hide: Hides the graphical user interface
Apply: Apply (save) your settings.
Close: Close (quits) DriveGLEAM.

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Known issues:

- Only fixed / physical disk's give useable results and should be enabled for monitoring.
- If you have start with OS enabled and no tray icons you will NOT get the window to appear! Use taskmanager to end the process.
- Won't display any activity on TrueCrypt drives. This is not a bug in DriveGLEAM and most likely a issue with TrueCrypt itself. (1)
 - WinXP pre SP1: You should not use CPU load indicator on such systems.
- Win2k: On some system with performance counters disabled DriveGLEAM might not work.
- Some systems may not report drive activity back (always idle). This is most likely a driver problem
- Remember that DriveGLEAM looks at read/write from the OS point of view and due to caching etc.. it might not match your real led 100% alltough it should be close ;)
- DriveGLEAM may display (to many) extra icons when drives are removed or added to the system while running.
- The scroll lock LED feature does in fact simulate a REAL keypress. This is a horrible solution but it works for some. The problem is that it's not possible to flash the scroll lock led in a systemfriendly way without simulating a real keypress. I hesitate to use other tricks / hacks to do this another way.
(1): There exists other software that is capable of showing activity for truecrypt drives. Software able to obtain such information might be using a less CPU friendly approach by installing custom drivers and / or hooks who take over functionallity for the OS.  TrueCrypt have been mailed about the problem but so far no reply have been gived.

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Scheduled features:

- Group logical drives under what physical drive it belongs to.
- Option: prevent XP from hiding notificationarea (tray) icons that have not been active for a while.
- Option: Display of S.M.A.R.T. info (HD temperature etc...).
- Option: Toolbar instead of trayicons.

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Tips and tricks:

In case DriveGLEAM should fail to start or for some reason not behave as expected try renaming DriveGLEAM.ini to DriveGLEAM_OLD.ini and se if that helps.
If you want to start DriveGLEAM by a shortcut or from the command line you can add /startup or -startup to the commandline for DriveGLEAM to start in hidden mode.

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The parallell port:

If for example you would like to have a bar of LED's on top of your monitor showing drive activity you can use the parallell port to make it possible to monitor up to 8 drives at once. You can also have two led's one to indicate reading and another to indicate writing. You will then ofcourse only be able to monitor 4 drives since the double amunt of leds is used.
Each number in DriveGLEAM's user interface represents a dataline on the parallell port. You can simply connect a LED with a resistor in serial directly to one of the datalines on the parallell port and to ground. That's it - just as simple as that :)
Please not that DriveGLEAM V1.0 is hardcoded to port 0x378 who usualy means the first parallel port in your computer. This will be user configurable in later versions.

DriveGLEAM makes use of inpout32.dll who can be obtained here:
http://logix4u.net/Legacy_Ports/Parallel_Port/Inpout32.dll_for_Windows_98/2000/NT/XP.html
HOW TO USE PARALLEL PORT MONITORING?
Don't unless you have at least some technical skills (btw it's real easy)

Connect a led as simple as this on the parallel port (the resistor needs to be about 1k)

Please also note many modern computers use 3.3volts on the datalines instead of 5.0volt who is more common.

circuit diagram

That's it!  (PS! It might work without the resistor but you risk destroying you PC in a worst case scenario! or "just" burn up your LED's)

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Technical info:

Files created:
.\DriveGLEAM.ini
Registry entries created:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\DriveGLEAM (used for automatic startup)
External dll's utilized:
inpout32.dll (only required for parallel port monitoring)

How DriveGLEAM works:
None of your business - it's top secret ;)

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Changelog:

Changes from V1.06 to V1.07 release:
- Added option to show separate CPU indicator for each CPU in the system.
- Critical fix: Possible (as in very rare) division by zero error fixed (Exception 0xc0000094)

Changes from V1.05 to V1.06 release:
- Minor bugfixes in the CPU usage routines

Changes from V1.04 to V1.05 release:
- Bugfix: CPU indicator now displays correct results for systems with multiple CPU's.

Changes from V1.03 to V1.04 release:
- Minor bugfixes and added online help button (opens a link to this documentation in your default browser)

Changes from V1.02 to V1.03 release:
- Bugfixes and GUI improvements.

Changes from V1.01 to V1.02 release:
- Possible workaround added if DriveGLEAM can't detect drive activity.

Changes from V1.0 to V1.01 release:
- Bugfix: the keyboard led was always flashing in single icon mode even if keyboard led was turned off.

Changes from Beta 1 to V1.0 release:
- Several small bugfixes for the GUI
- User configurable colors in .ini file for CPU, RAM and VRAM load meters
- Dynamic GB/MB display in tooltip for hard-drives
- Keyboard LED feature

Changes from Alpha 5 to Beta 1 release:
- Several bugfixes related to the GUI general functionallity
- A few improvements "under the hood"
- Corrected memoryleak with CPU/RAM/VRAM load indicators (they can now be used)

Changes from Alpha 4 to Alpha 5 release:
- Should now handle removing / adding new drives
- A minor trayicon driveletter update bug fixed
- Some minor bugfixes and internal optimizations

Changes from Alpha 3 to Alpha 4 release:
- Fixed a nasty memoryleak
- Some minor optimizations

Changes from Alpha 2 to Alpha 3 release:
- Fixed a bug who may cause DriveGLEAM to report wrong read/write status under certain contidions

Changes from Alpha 1 to Alpha 2 release:
- Some optimizations
- Rearranged the GUI slightly
- Added some extensions (cpu monitor, ram monitor, vram monitor)
- Lots of internal improvements

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Support:

For any questions, suggestions or general feedback please send a email to dirtcell@online.no - please keep DriveGLEAM in the subject somwhere.

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Alternative tools:

If you for some reason don't like DriveGLEAM there are other applications with simmilar functionallity. Please note that this information may be inaccurate and/or wrong. This list was last updated 25.July.2006
 Feature DriveGLEAM FloatLED
 O&O DriveLED HDD Led Indicator
 HardDriveIndicator
(OptionalReaction)		 Hard Disk Indicator (LoneWolf) Glint SoftLEDS

Separate read/write indicators yes yes
 yes -
 yes no yes yes
Separate indicator for each disk yes yes
 yes -
 no no yes yes
Combined indicator for all disks yes no
 no -
 yes yes yes yes
Disk throughput indicator no no
 no -
 yes no yes -
Polling interval selectable "fixed" *1)
 fixed, long -
 fixed, short selectable selectable -
Active systray icon yes no
 no -
 yes yes no -
Floating window no yes
 yes -
 no no yes no
Keyboard LED option yes no
 no yes
 no no no no
Parallel port option yes no
 no no
 no no no no
Installation required no no
 yes -
 no no yes -
S.M.A.R.T support
 no
 no
 yes *1)
 no
 no
 no
 -
 -
Price
 Free
 Free
 $19.95 20$
 Free Free Free -

Comments / Misc features
 CPU, RAM and Virtual RAM monitor as built in extensions.
S.M.A.R.T support and floating window is planned for future releases
 Use code from DriveGLEAM
*1) interval can be edited in .ini file
 *1) S.M.A.R.T only in V2 and up
 -
 -
 Does not "notice" brief disk accesses. Can do much more than just disk activity
 -

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Disclaimer:

Use at your own risk, don't blame me etc etc...

BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

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