Question Resetting/removing WINDOWS 11 HDR calibration tool settings.

[ArgusMold]

I bought a new nice monitor (nothing obscenely cool but much nicer than what I had) a few months ago (Feb). It is the KTC M27T20, and it is the first HDR capable monitor I have had for my own personal PC. I fiddled a bit with color settings until I was happy, and then started using it. I was very happy with its performance and how things looked, and used it as such for a while...until I discovered, by accident, that Windows 11 has an inbuilt HDR calibration tool. Excited to try this tool to see if I could get an even better experience, I started poking around in it. I quickly realized that it was a fairly basic tool and didn't expect much.

However, once I ran through its setup, and realizing that my picture quality now looks like absolute mayhem (the tool seems to be pretty crap 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 etc. directly via my monitor (as I had done previously). However, there is no reset or "off" switch for the windows 11 HDR calibration tool. The only option I have is to turn off HDR completely, or to select a different HDR calibration tool image profile!

Searching the web, it seems that windows 10 had the option to reset/disable the windows hdr calibration tool without disabling HDR altogether, but this is clearly not the case for windows 11.

Does anyone know how to solve this? I have tried many different profile options just to see if I can improve it if even by just a little bit, but everything looks horrible, as if it's a bootleg, super compressed, tv-show episode, with weird colors and blacks.

Please, any suggestions would be awesome! Hoping to avoid a fresh windows install just to disable a single setting. That would feel excessive, no?

Also, microsoft (at least in terms for windows) do not offer any customer support. Instead, they offer other windows users the chance of being their de facto tech support, unpaid, on their forums. Great.

The urge to switch to some Linux distro increases every day. . .

 

[Ralston18]

Look in Task Manager ( check all left column menu choices) and Process Explorer (Microsoft, free).

Do you see any Processes with "HDR" or "calibration". Some Name clue to help identify the tool process.

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

Objective being to discover what relevant process or processes, if any, are there and the status.

 

[ArgusMold]

Look in Task Manager ( check all left column menu choices) and Process Explorer (Microsoft, free).

Do you see any Processes with "HDR" or "calibration". Some Name clue to help identify the tool process.

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

Objective being to discover what relevant process or processes, if any, are there and the status.

Hi, Thanks for offering me advice!

I checked both Task Manager and installed the Process Explorer you recommended and check the windows processes there as well, but the closest thing to anything related to HDR (possibly) that I could find was in the Task Manager processes section called "Display Enhancement Service" which can be expanded to show the process with the same name. No status in Task Manager, 0%cpu usage, 0% memory usage. I could not find any, as far as I can tell at least, processes in Process Explorer that seems to relate to HDR calibration. Although I would not really know what to look for beyond certain key words relating to displays, HDR, calibration, images, etc.

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!

 

[Ralston18]

Display Enhancement Service (quick Google):

https://batcmd.com/windows/10/services/displayenhancementservice/

Delve a bit deeper.

Open Powershell as Admin and run the Get-Process cmdlet.

Here is how it looks via my computer (edited to just a few 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
879 29 2120 6136 0.97 920 0 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
811 81 67168 64000 8.45 18424 0 DDVDataCollector
282 17 19096 14304 0.17 7372 0 DDVRulesProcessor


The displayed output will be correctly formatted into neater columns.

And there will be differences in the two lists. Being different computers, etc..

Again look for HDR or other "name clues".

In the meantime I found the following Microsoft link:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-windows-2d767185-38ec-7fdc-6f97-bbc6c5ef24e6

 

[dwd999]

Does anyone know how to solve this? I have tried many different profile options just to see if I can improve it if even by just a little bit, but everything looks horrible, as if it's a bootleg, super compressed, tv-show episode, with weird colors and blacks.

Whatever calibrations you made are stored in files labeled

HDR Calibrated Profile [date and time].icc

which are stored in your

Users\[yourusername]\Appdata\Local\Packages\MicrosoftCorporation||.WindowsHDRCalibration
[some ID text]\LocalState

folder and also in the

Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color

folder. If you simply delete those files those calibrations will no longer affect your display. Or you can just search for all the files with an .icc extension to find and delete them.

 

[Ralston18]

I found this file via the above Windows path:

"C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\CalibratedDisplayProfile-2.icc"

However, before deleting make a backup copy adding BKUP to the file name....

E.g. : "C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color\CalibratedDisplayProfile-2BKUP.icc"

Just in case....

 

[ArgusMold]

Display Enhancement Service (quick Google):

https://batcmd.com/windows/10/services/displayenhancementservice/

Delve a bit deeper.

Open Powershell as Admin and run the Get-Process cmdlet.

Here is how it looks via my computer (edited to just a few 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
879 29 2120 6136 0.97 920 0 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
811 81 67168 64000 8.45 18424 0 DDVDataCollector
282 17 19096 14304 0.17 7372 0 DDVRulesProcessor


The displayed output will be correctly formatted into neater columns.

And there will be differences in the two lists. Being different computers, etc..

Again look for HDR or other "name clues".

In the meantime I found the following Microsoft link:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-windows-2d767185-38ec-7fdc-6f97-bbc6c5ef24e6

Ah, thank you very much!