Clearing my HDR settings in Windows 11.
Clearing my HDR settings in Windows 11.
I bought a new nice monitor about four months ago (February). It is called the KTC M27T20, and it was the first HDR display I had for my personal PC. I adjusted color settings until I was happy, then started using it. I was really happy with its performance and how things looked, so I used it as such for a while...until I found out by accident that Windows 11 has an inbuilt HDR calibration tool. Excited to try this tool and see if it could make the experience even better, I dug around in it. I quickly realized it was pretty basic and didn't expect much. However, after running through its setup and seeing my picture quality now look like absolute mayhem (the tool seems to be quite bad at what it's supposed to do), I went to my display settings to reset the tool/settings back to default so I could figure out colors and contrast directly via my monitor (as I had done before). But there is no reset or "off" switch for the Windows 11 HDR calibration tool. The only options are to turn off HDR completely, or select a different HDR calibration tool image profile! Searching the web shows that Windows 10 used to have an option to disable this tool without turning off HDR altogether, but clearly, it is not the case for Windows 11. Do anyone know how to fix this? I tried many different profile options just to see if I could improve it by even a little bit, but everything looks terrible, like it's from a bootleg, super compressed TV show episode with weird colors and blacks. Please give me some suggestions! I hope to avoid switching to Linux just to disable one single setting. That would feel excessive, right? Also, Microsoft (at least regarding Windows) does not offer customer support directly. Instead, they let other Windows users get tech help on their forums for free. Great. The urge to switch to a Linux distribution is growing every day...
Go to Task Manager on your computer. Then open Process Explorer from Microsoft (it's free). Look at the left menu in both windows. See if you find anything called "HDR" or "calibration". Sometimes a name clue helps figure out what tool it is. Visit this link for more info: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysint...s-explorer The goal here is to check if there are any important processes running and their status.
Hey, thanks so much for your advice! I looked into both Task Manager and Process Explorer that you suggested, plus checked the Windows processes there too. The thing closest to HDR stuff is in the Task Manager called "Display Enhancement Service," which can be expanded to show a process with the same name. But nothing shows up there, no status, zero CPU usage, zero memory usage. I couldn't find anything else in Process Explorer that seems related to HDR calibration at least. Honestly, I wouldn't know what to look for just based on certain key words like displays, HDR, calibration, or images. Here are two screenshots: Task manager https://imgur.com/a/0tYtwAg View: https://imgur.com/a/0tYtwAg Process Explorer https://imgur.com/a/PMGoaIy View: https://imgur.com/a/PMGoaIy Do you think the Display Enhancement Service could be a related process? Thanks again!
Here is a quick Google search for Display Enhancement Services (Windows 10): https://batcmd.com/windows/10/services/d...entservice
Let's dive in a little deeper. Open the Powershell command as an Administrator and run this command called Get-Process. Here is how it looks on my computer after I edited just some lines of results:
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Process Handles
NPM(K) PM(K) WS(K) CPU(s) Id SI ProcessName
------- ------ ----- ----- ------ -- -- -----------
163 10 2560 8372 0.05 4584 0 AdminService
157 10 2112 9404 0.05 7796 0 AggregatorHost
213 14 20508 17604 0.23 2372 1 ai
495 28 21908 39020 0.19 14004 1 ApplicationFrameHost
239 14 9996 19056 0.19 16120 0 audiodg
209 13 2932 9392 0.00 4128 1 backgroundTaskHost
315 31 18072 1616 0.09 10640 1 backgroundTaskHost
275 14 3976 19140 0.00 14836 1 backgroundTaskHost
4752 47 551280 94856 7.56 13392 1 Challenge
149 10 5672 8236 0.16 2852 0 conhost
149 10 5672 8072 0.08 5496 0 conhost
150 10 5676 8420 0.23 7100 0 conhost
109 8 5328 1096 0.02 11832 1 conhost
149 10 5672 8072 0.13 16352 0 conhost
149 10 5664 8224 0.08 18184 0 conhost
273 15 4048 17584 0.00 21096 1 conhost
830 29 2920 6380 4.05 644 1 csrss
622 22 8380 29592 2.44 9308 1 ctfmon
438 21 7580 17164 0.23 4260 0 dasHost
127 10 2076 8228 0.02 14688 0 dasHost
174 9 1868 9088 0.02 9716 0 DDVCollectorSvcApi
The results will look nice in neat columns on the screen. Also, there are differences between lists because of different computers and so on.
Look for HDR or other "name clues." In the meantime I found this Microsoft link: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...-...c6c5ef24e6
Whatever settings or calibrations you created are saved in files called HDR Calibrated Profile dated today, stored somewhere like This PC\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Packages\MicrosoftCorporation\WindowsHDRCalibration. If you just wipe those out of storage, the display won't change anymore. You can also hunt for and delete any file that ends with .icc to make sure nothing is lost.
I found this file at that Windows path: C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\CalibratedDisplayProfile-2.icc. But before I delete it, please make a copy first by changing the name to CalibratedDisplayProfile-2BKUP.icc. Just to be safe in case you need it back.