After connecting my WD My Book Essential, installing the WD Smartware from the My Book HD, and updated the firmware, I noticed the computer (Windows XP) fan was running more. I just thought it was doing backups a lot so didn’t pay much attention. All else on my computer seemed normal. A few days later I updated the WD Smartware to the latest version and when I synced my Palm (I know, it’s old), I got the blue screen of death. Something about a page fault in a non paged area related to “PalmUSBD.sys”.
Well, after many, many hours of different things, this is what worked. I don’t know all the exact steps, but it was something like this.
In Add/Remove programs, I uninstalled WD Smartware. After a reboot, I noticed that that the WD Smartware software didn’t completely uninstall. It was still in Add/Remove programs, but it wouldn’t allow my to Uninstall as it said something was missing.
Therefore, I went to the WD Smartware software on the My Book HD and found “WD SmartWare Setup (x86).msi” (older version), clicked on the install software, it gave me the option to remove it so I did. Then without reinstalling the Palm software I tried syncing to see what would happen. It worked. I synced a few times to get some stuff cleaned up. No problem.
Today when I restarted the computer (the HD isn’t connected) and synced, blue screen of death. I restarted and noticed there were still some WDXXXX.exe (WDFE.exe and others) software apps running in Task Manager. Also, in “C:\Program Files\Western Digital\WD SmartWare\Front Parlor” and sub folders, there were still some WDXXXX.exe (WDFE.exe and others) files. The fan was still running like crazy (like it has since I did the WD Smartware update … I think). I went to the Add/Remove programs … no WD Smartware. I found “WD SmartWare Setup (x86).msi” (newer version) in “C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Temp\ckz_FZCY\WDSmartWare_Stuff_for_Upgrader” and ran it. Now WD Smartware was listed in the Add/Remove programs again, BUT it was about 38 mb instead of the previous 41 mb. I did a “remove” and it worked. I synced and it worked. I looked in “C:\Program Files\Western Digital\WD SmartWare\Front Parlor” and all the .exe files are now gone. I looked in the Task Manager and all the WDXXX.exe files were gone. A few minutes later, the fan stopped.
To me, the WD Smartware software (at least the update) is not only bad for the Palm sync, but it appears that it runs a lot in the background, enough to make the fan run A LOT.
Well, since the WD Smartware saved me by having made multiple copies of some data that got corrupted, I’m going to try installing the original version and see if the Palm syncs (like it did from last week until I did the update). It would sure be nice to get an update that allows Palm syncing and doesn’t use a lot of CPU.
From the WD community, others have problems too.
http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-Smartware/This-software-has-serious-problems/m-p/1291#M28
http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-Smartware/WD-Smartware-problems/td-p/2546
[http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-Smartware/Why-is-the-smartware-backup-taking-so-long-Is-something-wrong/m-p/18734#M502
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