From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

USB flashdrive light goes on for no apparent reason.

I have a flash drive with nothing but data, music on it, but when I'm
doing other things totally unrelated, the light in the flash drive goes
on for short periods. Not a problem but I just want to understand. Can
you all tell me why the light goes on?
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 2/19/2026 9:39 PM, micky wrote:

USB flashdrive light goes on for no apparent reason.

I have a flash drive with nothing but data, music on it, but when I'm
doing other things totally unrelated, the light in the flash drive goes
on for short periods. Not a problem but I just want to understand. Can
you all tell me why the light goes on?

A virus scan?
Automatic defrag?
--
@~@ Simplicity is Beauty! Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch!
/ v \ May the Force and farces be with you! Live long and prosper!!
/( _ )\ https://sites.google.com/site/changmw/
^ ^ https://github.com/changmw/changmw
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Thu, 2/19/2026 8:39 AM, micky wrote:

USB flashdrive light goes on for no apparent reason.

I have a flash drive with nothing but data, music on it, but when I'm
doing other things totally unrelated, the light in the flash drive goes
on for short periods. Not a problem but I just want to understand. Can
you all tell me why the light goes on?

Windhawk ? Explorer Patcher ? Clean machine ???

Process Monitor, Filter set to "Operation is Readfile/Writefile/Createfile", then look to see if a particular partition letter is being accessed.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Not all activity will show up that way, but it's a damn sight easier
than using WinDBG. If the system is doing physical layer access (unlikely), then that may not show up.

We used to see this behavior on older Windows. If you had a DVD
in the drive, it would "do a sniff" of J: every once in a while.
In some cases, people would see sniffing once a second. There
is no particular reason this should be going on today, unless
you have configured Windows Defender to do this (DevMode?).

They don't even tell you here, whether enabling that causes
USB sticks to be scanned. I have not particularly noticed my
8GB stick being scanned (the one with the very nice LED), but
on the other hand, I have seen my fair share of unnecessary
defender yellow warnings on my D: drive.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/advanced-settings/developer-mode

Paul
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 23:33:38 +0800, "Mr.
Man-wai Chang" <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> wrote:

On 2/19/2026 9:39 PM, micky wrote:

USB flashdrive light goes on for no apparent reason.

I have a flash drive with nothing but data, music on it, but when I'm
doing other things totally unrelated, the light in the flash drive goes
on for short periods. Not a problem but I just want to understand. Can
you all tell me why the light goes on?

I should have thought of those, but...

A virus scan?

Been happeing now for 3.5 hours, and maybe last night too. No scan
takes that long.

Automatic defrag?

Just wrote the files yesterday to a blank flashdrive, 3GB into a 16GB
drive. No fragmenting to defrag. --- But in general, do I have
automatic defragging? How would I know?
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:59:42 -0500, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 2/19/2026 8:39 AM, micky wrote:

USB flashdrive light goes on for no apparent reason.

I have a flash drive with nothing but data, music on it, but when I'm
doing other things totally unrelated, the light in the flash drive goes
on for short periods. Not a problem but I just want to understand. Can
you all tell me why the light goes on?

Windhawk ? Explorer Patcher ? Clean machine ???

Windhawk has been deleted. EP is mostly or entirely about the GUI. It's
clean afaik.

Process Monitor, Filter set to "Operation is Readfile/Writefile/Createfile", >then look to see if a particular partition letter is being accessed.

That would work, but the output is so big. And below you say not all
activity would show up.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Not all activity will show up that way, but it's a damn sight easier
than using WinDBG. If the system is doing physical layer access (unlikely), >then that may not show up.

We used to see this behavior on older Windows. If you had a DVD
in the drive, it would "do a sniff" of J: every once in a while.
In some cases, people would see sniffing once a second. There
is no particular reason this should be going on today, unless
you have configured Windows Defender to do this (DevMode?).

I didn't make any changes to winDEfender. I use it but with defaults.

They don't even tell you here, whether enabling that causes
USB sticks to be scanned. I have not particularly noticed my
8GB stick being scanned (the one with the very nice LED), but
on the other hand, I have seen my fair share of unnecessary
defender yellow warnings on my D: drive.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/advanced-settings/developer-mode

I didn't even know we had developer mode for PC's. I've onlh seen it on android.

Paul

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 11:38:13 -0500, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

Process Monitor, Filter set to "Operation is Readfile/Writefile/Createfile", >>then look to see if a particular partition letter is being accessed.

That would work, but the output is so big. And below you say not all >activity would show up.

Already have it installed, but output is enormous and when it was
runing, I couldn't go to Firefox. Wanted to see how to limit output.

As soon as I closed Procmon, Firefox showed up.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Using win11 but you win10 guys are pretty sharp. Did

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:59:42 -0500, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

Process Monitor, Filter set to "Operation is Readfile/Writefile/Createfile", >then look to see if a particular partition letter is being accessed.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Can't get to Agent or Eudora either (like Firefox) to type results when
procmon running. Is that normal?

Fortunely I've learned the secret method in win11 to take screen shots.
Af least that worked.

504 Create file E:\ Success Desired Access R...
504 File sysem cont E:\ Invalid Device R. Control 0x9023c(D...
504 Close file E:\ Success

And more stuff like this. I'll give more details if anyone wants.
So why is it doing this, trying to access the drive? And how can I make
it stop?
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

micky wrote on 2/19/2026 3:20 PM:

Using win11 but you win10 guys are pretty sharp. Did

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:59:42 -0500, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

Process Monitor, Filter set to "Operation is Readfile/Writefile/Createfile", >> then look to see if a particular partition letter is being accessed.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Can't get to Agent or Eudora either (like Firefox) to type results when procmon running. Is that normal?

Fortunely I've learned the secret method in win11 to take screen shots.
Af least that worked.

504 Create file E:\ Success Desired Access R...
504 File sysem cont E:\ Invalid Device R. Control 0x9023c(D...
504 Close file E:\ Success

And more stuff like this. I'll give more details if anyone wants.
So why is it doing this, trying to access the drive? And how can I make
it stop?

Black vinyl electrical tape usually works well for me.


--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Thu, 2/19/2026 4:20 PM, micky wrote:

Using win11 but you win10 guys are pretty sharp. Did

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:59:42 -0500, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

Process Monitor, Filter set to "Operation is Readfile/Writefile/Createfile", >> then look to see if a particular partition letter is being accessed.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Can't get to Agent or Eudora either (like Firefox) to type results when procmon running. Is that normal?

Fortunely I've learned the secret method in win11 to take screen shots.
Af least that worked.

504 Create file E:\ Success Desired Access R...
504 File sysem cont E:\ Invalid Device R. Control 0x9023c(D...
504 Close file E:\ Success

And more stuff like this. I'll give more details if anyone wants.
So why is it doing this, trying to access the drive? And how can I make
it stop?

When you use Process Monitor, in a shell you can use

tasklist /svc

and that will give a listing of PID (process ID) and the name
of the thing.

For example, say that "504" was a PID. Check to see if there is a
process name associated with it. It could be a service host, in which
case we'd need to learn more about it to understand what its sphere
of influence is.

*******

Yes, Shift-PrtScn works, and puts a copy of the screen
into the Clipboard. You can then paste that into a graphics
editing application.

snippingtool.exe takes screenshots, and it can be pinned to the Task Bar
so you don't have to keep typing that into the Start:Run box.

*******

File Explorer can take an interest in a USB stick, but that could happen
if the user attempts to access E: in a windows.

But if 504 has some other name besides "explorer.exe", then you would
want to know what its name is. And tasklist /svc lists both processes
and svchost definitions. Some svchost, have 16 things inside them, but
they may also be someone timid services that hardly ever run.
Whereas wuauserv is a busy-beaver, because it is related to
Windows Update and scanning the side by side tree for work to do. And there
is no good reason for that to be "interested in E: " .

A slack-jawed svchost...

svchost.exe 3532 OneSyncSvc_a49aa,
PimIndexMaintenanceSvc_a49aa,
UnistoreSvc_a49aa, UserDataSvc_a49aa

The OS boots up in a dynamic fashion, and the assignment of process
ID numbers (PID) is in a sense "random". That's why you have to
dump a copy of that info, when doing a Procmon at the time.

Paul
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 2026/2/19 23:46:9, Paul wrote:
[]

Yes, Shift-PrtScn works, and puts a copy of the screen
into the Clipboard. You can then paste that into a graphics
editing application.

[]

PrtScn usually works on its own for me - no need for shift. Alt-PrtScn, however, just copies the currently-active window, which saves cropping
effort if you only wanted that (which is usually the case for me).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()ALIS-Ch++(p)Ar++T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Reality television. It's eroding the ability of good scripted
television to survive. - Patrick Duffy in Radio Times 2-8 February 2013
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 2/20/2026 12:34 AM, micky wrote:

I should have thought of those, but...

A virus scan?

Been happeing now for 3.5 hours, and maybe last night too. No scan
takes that long.

Automatic defrag?

Just wrote the files yesterday to a blank flashdrive, 3GB into a 16GB drive. No fragmenting to defrag. --- But in general, do I have
automatic defragging? How would I know?

Just my wild guesses. I am also curious about the constantly flashing HD
LED as well, not just the USB ports!!

Back in the MS-DOS single-user, no-networking days, everything was more certain. The floppy diskette drive never ever made a sound suddenly. :)
--
@~@ Simplicity is Beauty! Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch!
/ v \ May the Force and farces be with you! Live long and prosper!!
/( _ )\ https://sites.google.com/site/changmw/
^ ^ https://github.com/changmw/changmw
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On 2/20/2026 12:24 PM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:

Just my wild guesses. I am also curious about the constantly flashing HD
LED as well, not just the USB ports!!

I think this "Hard Disk LED" should be re-labelled as "Trust Me"! :)
--
@~@ Simplicity is Beauty! Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch!
/ v \ May the Force and farces be with you! Live long and prosper!!
/( _ )\ https://sites.google.com/site/changmw/
^ ^ https://github.com/changmw/changmw
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Thu, 2/19/2026 4:20 PM, micky wrote:

Using win11 but you win10 guys are pretty sharp. Did

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:59:42 -0500, Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

Process Monitor, Filter set to "Operation is Readfile/Writefile/Createfile", >> then look to see if a particular partition letter is being accessed.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Can't get to Agent or Eudora either (like Firefox) to type results when procmon running. Is that normal?

Fortunely I've learned the secret method in win11 to take screen shots.
Af least that worked.

504 Create file E:\ Success Desired Access R...
504 File sysem cont E:\ Invalid Device R. Control 0x9023c(D...
504 Close file E:\ Success

And more stuff like this. I'll give more details if anyone wants.
So why is it doing this, trying to access the drive? And how can I make
it stop?

On the 0x9023c IOCTL call, I can't find any examples
at all of using that. There seems to be such an IOCTL,
but maybe that activity is nefarious.

I hope the machine has been "fully rebooted" at least
once, to check and see whether this is some sort of
Windows Update side effect.

Another possibility, is the USB stick is a SONY, with a
reversed sense RMB (Removable Media Bit) and the USB
stick is claiming it is a HDD.

And as for Procmon, it should not block other activity
on the computer. Perhaps if the computer had a single
core, there could be some fighting going on for CPU
cycles.

I would test with a second USB stick, like a Cruiser Glide.

Paul
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Mr. Man-wai Chang <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> wrote:

On 2/20/2026 12:34 AM, micky wrote:

I should have thought of those, but...

A virus scan?

Been happeing now for 3.5 hours, and maybe last night too. No scan
takes that long.

Automatic defrag?

Just wrote the files yesterday to a blank flashdrive, 3GB into a 16GB
drive. No fragmenting to defrag. --- But in general, do I have
automatic defragging? How would I know?

Just my wild guesses. I am also curious about the constantly flashing HD
LED as well, not just the USB ports!!

Back in the MS-DOS single-user, no-networking days, everything was more certain. The floppy diskette drive never ever made a sound suddenly. :)

Oh yes, it did. Especially in MS Word. It would often randomly seek to all physical drives when doing other actions. It was some deep-seated
assumption that everything would be stored on a removable disk and it
needed to check that it was still there before doing anything.

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Sun, 2/22/2026 12:08 PM, Chris wrote:

Mr. Man-wai Chang <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> wrote:

On 2/20/2026 12:34 AM, micky wrote:

I should have thought of those, but...

A virus scan?

Been happeing now for 3.5 hours, and maybe last night too. No scan
takes that long.

Automatic defrag?

Just wrote the files yesterday to a blank flashdrive, 3GB into a 16GB
drive. No fragmenting to defrag. --- But in general, do I have
automatic defragging? How would I know?

Just my wild guesses. I am also curious about the constantly flashing HD
LED as well, not just the USB ports!!

Back in the MS-DOS single-user, no-networking days, everything was more
certain. The floppy diskette drive never ever made a sound suddenly. :)

Oh yes, it did. Especially in MS Word. It would often randomly seek to all physical drives when doing other actions. It was some deep-seated
assumption that everything would be stored on a removable disk and it
needed to check that it was still there before doing anything.

If you watch with Process Monitor, you will see some pretty
unbelievable scanning sequences in there. They are logically
unrelated to anything! But what would be the point of me
telling people this. And no, it's not malware.

The system can have eight or more ETW collectors running at the
same time, but there is no reason for those to generate probes
or scans resulting in a disk cascade in the trace. So while Process Monitor
is an ETW client, the OS has its own collection of traces running
for its own purposes. Sleep Studies or whatever.

I was hoping Micky would comment on the PID or the Process Name
of the thing probing E: as a hint. The disk has more than one
level of access, and accessing as E: is only one of the levels.
There is no guarantee that everything is mapped -- ETW has
more event types, than Process Monitor has parsers. A recent
addition, was the ability to record network packets in
Process Monitor. And the developer, Bruce maybe, would
have picked that out of the source of the Microsoft
version of Wireshark.

Paul
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 2/22/2026 12:08 PM, Chris wrote:

Mr. Man-wai Chang <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> wrote:

On 2/20/2026 12:34 AM, micky wrote:

I should have thought of those, but...

A virus scan?

Been happeing now for 3.5 hours, and maybe last night too. No scan
takes that long.

Automatic defrag?

Just wrote the files yesterday to a blank flashdrive, 3GB into a 16GB
drive. No fragmenting to defrag. --- But in general, do I have
automatic defragging? How would I know?

Just my wild guesses. I am also curious about the constantly flashing HD >> LED as well, not just the USB ports!!

Back in the MS-DOS single-user, no-networking days, everything was more >> certain. The floppy diskette drive never ever made a sound suddenly. :)

Oh yes, it did. Especially in MS Word. It would often randomly seek to all physical drives when doing other actions. It was some deep-seated assumption that everything would be stored on a removable disk and it needed to check that it was still there before doing anything.

If you watch with Process Monitor, you will see some pretty
unbelievable scanning sequences in there. They are logically
unrelated to anything! But what would be the point of me
telling people this. And no, it's not malware.

No criticism, just a observation:

You often mention Process Monitor, but as far as I know, Process
Monitor is add-on software, while for tasks like this - i.e. checking
which processes are doing what on a certain drive - the bundled Resource Monitor is perfectly OK/sufficient.

Resource Monitor's 'Disk' tab has both a 'Disk Activity' pane - giving program name, PID and File - and a 'Processes with Disk Activity' pane
- giving program name, PID and Read/Write/Total B/sec.

In my experience the 'Disk Activity' pane is often enough for cases
like the ones in this thread, especially when combined with the 'Queue
Length' graphs per drive in the righthand pane.

For those unaware of Resource Monitor: You can of course find it by
typing the name into Search or by Task Manager -> 'Performance' tab -> three-horizontal-dots icon in the upper right -> Resource Monitor.

[...]
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 16:20:07 -0500, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

Using win11 but you win10 guys are pretty sharp. Did

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:59:42 -0500, Paul ><nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

Process Monitor, Filter set to "Operation is Readfile/Writefile/Createfile", >>then look to see if a particular partition letter is being accessed.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Can't get to Agent or Eudora either (like Firefox) to type results when >procmon running. Is that normal?

Fortunely I've learned the secret method in win11 to take screen shots.
Af least that worked.

504 Create file E:\ Success Desired Access R...
504 File sysem cont E:\ Invalid Device R. Control 0x9023c(D...
504 Close file E:\ Success

And more stuff like this. I'll give more details if anyone wants.
So why is it doing this, trying to access the drive? And how can I make
it stop?

There were other references later, not the same as this.

I was going to adjust the column widths so none of the messages would be truncated. And I was going to take photos with my phone, so I could
get more than one photo, of different parts of the file, in one session.
But I actually loaded the file with songs, tested it, and moved it to my suitcase, soI'll never know what it was doing, but I hated that light.
It was like the phone was ringing. It's quiet now. zzzzzzzz.
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Sun, 2/22/2026 2:15 PM, Frank Slootweg wrote:

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

On Sun, 2/22/2026 12:08 PM, Chris wrote:

Mr. Man-wai Chang <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> wrote:

On 2/20/2026 12:34 AM, micky wrote:

I should have thought of those, but...

A virus scan?

Been happeing now for 3.5 hours, and maybe last night too. No scan
takes that long.

Automatic defrag?

Just wrote the files yesterday to a blank flashdrive, 3GB into a 16GB >>>>> drive. No fragmenting to defrag. --- But in general, do I have
automatic defragging? How would I know?

Just my wild guesses. I am also curious about the constantly flashing HD >>>> LED as well, not just the USB ports!!

Back in the MS-DOS single-user, no-networking days, everything was more >>>> certain. The floppy diskette drive never ever made a sound suddenly. :) >>>

Oh yes, it did. Especially in MS Word. It would often randomly seek to all >>> physical drives when doing other actions. It was some deep-seated
assumption that everything would be stored on a removable disk and it
needed to check that it was still there before doing anything.

If you watch with Process Monitor, you will see some pretty
unbelievable scanning sequences in there. They are logically
unrelated to anything! But what would be the point of me
telling people this. And no, it's not malware.

No criticism, just a observation:

You often mention Process Monitor, but as far as I know, Process
Monitor is add-on software, while for tasks like this - i.e. checking
which processes are doing what on a certain drive - the bundled Resource Monitor is perfectly OK/sufficient.

Resource Monitor's 'Disk' tab has both a 'Disk Activity' pane - giving program name, PID and File - and a 'Processes with Disk Activity' pane
- giving program name, PID and Read/Write/Total B/sec.

In my experience the 'Disk Activity' pane is often enough for cases
like the ones in this thread, especially when combined with the 'Queue Length' graphs per drive in the righthand pane.

For those unaware of Resource Monitor: You can of course find it by
typing the name into Search or by Task Manager -> 'Performance' tab -> three-horizontal-dots icon in the upper right -> Resource Monitor.

[...]

Many of the utilities, are just clever re-applications of ETW.

Yes, I'm aware of Resource Monitor, and the fine grained observations
it offers. One difference would be, more sources are covered by
Process Monitor (procmon). For example, System would be in there.
Even though I have not the foggiest clue what "System" means in terms
of abusing filesystems. For example, my RAMDrive may be charged
to System, as belonging to System, and in some cases, RAMDrives
actually lived in Ring0. But they are not all that way.

For example, right now in Task Manager

Working Set (memory)
System 101 GB

The RAMDrive is 99000 MB at the moment. That's the size I use
when placing virtual machine files on it. Permanent copies
are not needed, as the virtual machine file sets can be
discarded after testing a feature.

Paul
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-11

On Sun, 2/22/2026 4:04 PM, micky wrote:

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 16:20:07 -0500, micky <NONONOmisc07@fmguy.com> wrote:

Using win11 but you win10 guys are pretty sharp. Did

In alt.comp.os.windows-11, on Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:59:42 -0500, Paul
<nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

Process Monitor, Filter set to "Operation is Readfile/Writefile/Createfile",
then look to see if a particular partition letter is being accessed.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Can't get to Agent or Eudora either (like Firefox) to type results when
procmon running. Is that normal?

Fortunely I've learned the secret method in win11 to take screen shots.
Af least that worked.

504 Create file E:\ Success Desired Access R...
504 File sysem cont E:\ Invalid Device R. Control 0x9023c(D...
504 Close file E:\ Success

And more stuff like this. I'll give more details if anyone wants.
So why is it doing this, trying to access the drive? And how can I make
it stop?

There were other references later, not the same as this.

I was going to adjust the column widths so none of the messages would be truncated. And I was going to take photos with my phone, so I could
get more than one photo, of different parts of the file, in one session.
But I actually loaded the file with songs, tested it, and moved it to my suitcase, soI'll never know what it was doing, but I hated that light.
It was like the phone was ringing. It's quiet now. zzzzzzzz.

Have a play with SnippingTool.exe . You can pin that to the Taskbar.

SnippingTool has three groups of icons in the top row.

"New" and four icons on the left. These are the
icons controlling the initial screen capture. The "rectangular"
option for capture, is convenient when only wanting to do OCR.

The middle icons are for post-processing. The sixth icon
from the left, of those middle ones, if you hold your mouse
over it, it says "Text Actions". Clicking that does OCR,
but it is relatively dumb OCR in that lines of text can be
split up into smaller chunks we don't need. There will be
a "Copy Text" button for copying the OCRed text. You can paste
that text into Notepad.

On the right, are "Save As" icons and so on. You can save
a picture and then continue to do OCR. The pictures collected
can also be in your Pictures folder somewhere (date stamped).

The only thing it doesn't do well, is the timer should have
applied to everything, and it does not. When I want to capture
an open menu, that isn't always possible. Then I have to use
the capture tool in GIMP to do it.

It's possible the XBOX gaming or some NVidia panel also have
screen capturing options, but I've not used them.

Paul
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2