SGE2010P ring of 4 switches reports one "link down"

Question

Any help appreciated. I called Cisco Support but they didn't have an answer.
We have 4 SGE2010P switches in a ring using ports 24 and 48 to connect. All are same hardware and firmware and the stack is working nicely.
Problem is - System - System Management - Stack Management page of web interface shows one link in the ring down yet it does not appear to be down. If we pull a cable from one of the other links then this "down" link is magically back.
Two questions:
1. Is the switch purposely breaking the chain to avoid a loop condition? If so, does that mean a 1-2-3-4 ring requires switch 1 to go the long path through 2 and 3 to communicate with 4?
2. Even if all is working as a ring and this is just a status reporting error, we have a problem in that one link failure cannot be detected since it shows down even when it isn't. That is bad for remote management and I cannot see any way to determine status of all 4 links shorts of visiting all switches and physically eyeing the ports in question.
Any insights appreciated.
Thanks.
John,

Answer 1

Hi John
With this stack, you haven't had to worry about spanning tree, the stack takes care of making sure that a broadcast storm isn't created by a loop, one of the interfaces becomes inactive. But if you had a real interface failure or a stacking port was to fail, the ring topology would still allow all switches in the stack  to still  be connected.
Well stacking becomes convenient for a few situations;
reduce the number of infrastructure IP hosts that need managing on your network
Allowing for Link Aggregation from servers to multiple switches in a stack.
You always have the option for;
taking the switches out of stack mode
running Link Aggregation with RSTP as per the rough diagram below;
The better more proactive solution  is to use a ONPLUS appliance, which will proactively inform you when there is a problem on your end user network. 
ONPLUS is more than just a cloud based service, there are alot of benefits of this appliance in fascilitating a pro-active support for your end user.
We produced p/n ON100-K9 appliance  to allow our partners to provide a more proactive professional services enviironment for their customers .  Even though my personal network can stand a failure, I utilize a ON100-K9 unit for demonstration purposes .
Because I use my network for experiments and it may change daily, the onplus appliance (p/n ON100-K9) send me quite often emails warning me of changes via the cisco cloud based service.  Here is an example below of a warning i receive via email.
For an independent description of ONPLUS appliance and the cloud based service,  check out this review from smallnetbuilder
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/31805-cisco-onplus-reviewed
John , I am happy to also have a quick chat via phone  to discuss the topology options and better understand your needs.  If you wish send me your contact details to;
dhornste  at  cisco.com   (just remove the spaces and replace the at with @  )
regards Dave
Systems Engineer
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Research Triangle Park
NORTH CAROLINA