XYplorer Beta Club

I had a mysterious problem with my machine where a backup hard drive E (which is only accessed once a day) kept spinning up (using power and making a noise) for no reason throughout the day. Clearly something was accessing it for no reason.

Using process monitor I eventually narrowed down on XYPlorer as the only culprit, which was accessing a particular obscure folder for no apparent reason (no relevant open tabs etc).
A search of the xyplorer config showed that this folder was listed as item 0 under [LookIn] -- and it was in fact the last used LookIn folder in a search done a very long time ago, and which is not related to anything currently open.
This seems to be a minor bug to me. No problem with retaining the list of previous LookIn folders -- but the code should not be accessing the folder in any way unless a request is made.

Am I missing something here.

Hmm, it's hard to believe that. XYplorer does not do anything in this location. Why should it? It may access the folder once at startup to retrieve the icon, and that's it.

Is this reproducible?

Yup 100% reproducible. Every single time Xyplorer is opened Process Monitor (or Process Explorer too) shows an Xyplorer access to this folder. If I change the folder to something else, the access (to that folder) stops.

The problem may be that "access at startup to retrieve the icon" that you mentioned. But it should not do that (the search area is completely closed, not being used, and I don't display native file icons anyway).

I have solved the problem (for me) anyway by shifting the default in the 0 position to another folder on a commonly used drive.

The icon cannot be the cause. Startup would hang a while in that case, and then give up.

Is a tab open in that path? Maybe in the second pane? Maybe folder sizes are calculated?

Nope.. No tabs open except downloads folder (C drive) in each pane. No folder sizes. Nothing in config ini pointing to that folder except the previous search.

Could you post a full screenshot of XYplorer while this is happening?

Apologies for the delay.

Not sure what to screenshot -- nothing would be visible within XYPlorer - it is simply a disk access which you can detect using other software (the relevant screenshots are in my first post). It is 100% reproducible so I think it you use a process monitor you should see the same disk access on every loading of XYPlorer (happy to pass some hints as to how to set this up portably and filter out all events that access a particular drive or folder - but that is probably more suitable in a Private Message).

As I said it is not a big deal for me now that I know what is causing the disk access and how to fix it.
Many thanks for all of your work with this great software.

I meant a screenshot of XYplorer, not of the process monitor.

Not 100% sure what you will see there but here is a screenshot after I open Xyplorer. As I said, the disk access depends on the last used [Lookin] and changes when that changes.

ver 19.50???

Please upgrade to the latest version. Let's first see if the issue exists in the present, and not only in the past.

Will do - will let you know

Issue remains in latest version and is easily demonstrated

Here the directory at zero position of [Lookin] is C:\Users\aubrey1\Pictures\ (and there is no other reference to this folder anywhere in the config)
I then closed the bottom area (in case its visibility does anything)

I then closed an restarted XYplorer 3 times. On each restart this folder (or at least the one one-up from it was accessed as a process in an apparent attempt to create a file
I then changed the folder to a different one on a different drive (without actually doing a search)
I then opened and closed Xyplorer twice - and each time it start a process attempting to access that newly chosen folder and its root
To reiterate this is not a big deal for me but it should not be accessing as it prevents drives from sleeping

Thanks! Might be better in next beta.