Clevo Control Center extremly slow

Has anybody ever seen the Clevo Control Center behave like that:



As you can see, when starting the Control Center by double-clicking its tray icon it takes a very long time until the window finally comes up. In the Windows Task Manager you can see that it is in fact starting right away, taking the full capacity of one CPU but the memory is only filled very slowly. (It is the same when I start it by clicking C:\Program Files (x86)\Hotkey\ControlCenter.exe.)

Once the window is there, the hover effects of the buttons are somewhat delayed; except for the most recently hovered buttons. It looks to me like the Control Center has problems reading data from the hard drive at a reasonable speed. But then why the high CPU utilization?

The Soundblaster X-Fi MB5 shows a very similar behaviour. It takes rather long to start and then each tab has a very long loading time when selected for the first time.

My system's boot up, however, is very fast in spite of Control Center and Soundblaster X-Fi MB5 being loaded in the background. So the problem seems to be with the GUIs for both these programms. All other programms on my system including 3D games etc. run completely fine.

It was definitely not like this when I started setting up my system, but as I had been installing a lot of software I cannot say what I did right before this started. I really don't want to start installing everything from scratch even though I know this might be the only way to finally get to the bottom of this.

But maybe some of you have an idea what I could try?


My system is a Clevo P651RE6-G
(bought as Tuxedo Book XC1506 from the German distributor https://www.tuxedocomputers.com)

Intel Core i7-6820HK 2.7 GHz (4 cores, 8 threads)
32 GB RAM
NVIDIA GTX 970M
Samsung SSD PRO 512 GB

BIOS 1.05.18
EC 1.05.07
Windows 10 Education 64-bit


Here is what I already tried:

The problem started while I had the older version of Control Panel (v5.0000.0.36) installed that came with my notebook's installation CD. After re-installing did not help I also tried the newer version (v5.0001.0.58) from http://clevo.com/clevo_down.asp, but the behaviour is just the same. Regarding Soundblaster X-Fi MB5, I already seemed to have the most recent version.

I tried deactivating my anti virus (Avast) and disabling all SSD features of Samsung Magician, both to no avail.

 

That's definitely weird. Try uninstalling Avast and see if the problem goes away. It may have some hooks in something even though you tried with it deactivated.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I did as you suggested, but the behaviour is just the same after uninstalling Avast and rebooting.

It would have surprised me if Avast was the culprit because it was the very first programm I installed. So it was already there during the time when I had initially installed Control Center and did not observe that weird behaviour.

 

Hmm... I don't know. Very odd. Maybe there is just some kind of corruption with your Windows installation or the OS drive is having issues of some kind. I've not seen this (so far) with an SSD, but I have experienced very similar unresponsive/sluggish behavior with a HDD that was dying. Might not hurt to check your drive(s) for errors or problem codes. You can use something like CrystalDisk Info to check for SMART codes. What drive(s) do you have installed?

 

@LinusF try double clicking it, this sometimes happens to me. I've never checked to see if it launches in the task manager, but I now simply double click it in the task bar to launch it and it opens at the speed it should.
I've not much cause for concern since I use the app once in a blue moon, so as long as the important apps like HWinfo64 and TS are working perfectly I'm comfortable looking the other way. I'd say it likely comes down to being another case of inconsistent and sloppy software from Clevo.

 

@Mr. Fox I have one Samsung SSD PRO 512 GB, no other drives. I never experienced any probelms with it.

 

@TBoneSan I'm not sure what you mean. I always open the Control Center by double clicking its tray icon in the task bar's notification area. I just also openned it once by double clicking C:\Program Files (x86)\Hotkey\ControlCenter.exe directly in Windows explorer to see if that made any difference.

I agree with you that I rarely ever use the Control Center at all. Its main purpose to me is to restore the keyboard illumination (off) at boot up. And for that I don't even have to open the GUI. It's possible to look the other way, but sometimes It just bothers me when something isn't working as it is supposed to.

The laggyness of the Soundblaster X-Fi MB5 is more troublesome, because I use it more frequently to switch the Equalizer settings depending on the speakers/headphones I am currently using.

I'm afraid that you are right saying it is a case of inconsistent and sloppy software from Clevo. Too bad we cannot really get hold of them. My reseller just shrugs it off, saying I'm the first and only one with this problem... :-/

 

What I basically meant was essentially open it twice. I believe notification tray icons only require 1 click, hence my double click suggestion, but you've made me question that

Regarding the Soundblaster XF software you might be in a little strife diagnosing it since the user pool is pretty thin here. Mainly since most people don't like the bloat of it, which may essentially be what you've come to experience too. Most people just keep the system lean and use Realtek drivers. I do realise this may not suit you though.

However, something to look forward to and I'm keen as mustard for is Brother @j95 's modded Realtek drivers.
He's done some of his voodoo magic and got legit digital stereo Dolby working, amongst other goodies. Hopefully he'll chime in here and let us know if we'll be lucky enough to use it one day.
Guys like him and @Prema should be on slow-to-react-and-lazy-Clevo's payroll if they know what's good for their future. Without their contributions there is no way in hell Clevo would have the cult status it has today.

 

It would likely resolve things, but wouldn't tell you what caused them.

Have you tried a clean removal of those two programs via something like Revo Uninstaller?

 

your 4K speeds are insanely high. I bet you are using a RAM disk in which case, that would be benchmarking your RAM and not your actual SSD and it may be the cause of your issue as well.

Try uninstalling the RAM Disk software

also, try uninstalling your Clevo control center then rebooting

then install the latet one using the Obisidian Tool

Select your laptop model from the list, then choose your WLAN card Intel or Killer then click on the drivers tab to install the latest Clevo Control Center and update any available driver updates

 

Thank you all for your suggestions! But I'll be damned, today I solved it by accident:

The support guy of a graphics editor I am having issues with told me to create a new Windows user account to see if some issue is also there with a fresh account. It did not help that issue. But while I was logged in with that new account, I tried off the top of my head to open the Clevo Center and -- Eureka! - it openned fast and worked as expected. The same goes for the SoundBlaster X-Fi MB5.

My first thoughts were: At least it's not a hardware issue. By migrating my old account to that new one, I can eventually resolve it.

But when I logged back in with my old account and tried to open Clevo Center, it worked just as well!!
I'm glad I have those recorded videos to proof that I'm not insane.


So the bottom line is, if you are facing the problem I had:

• create a new Windows user account
• log in with it
• start Clevo Center (it should work normally)
• log back in with you old account (it should now also work)

 

Magic!



@Papusan

 

Good that you got it resolved. Just curious of the cause though.

Do you by any chance have Virtualization enabled in the BIOS ? VM software like Microsoft Hyper-V can cause such sluggish behavior.

Another cause for sluggish behavior I have noticed is if you have Auto WiFi switch in BIOS that some laptops have. In this case, connecting via WiFi will cause this and connecting via LAN will resolve it.

Sent from my ASUS_Z016D using Tapatalk

 

I had the same issue,

tried your account trick but nothing happened.

I've just uninstalled SBX and now CCC and Flexikey are normal.

 

Same issue here, tried new user account fix and uninstalled SBX as well, but no luck. It works fine on the new account though, but not on my normal account.

 

Sounds like an issue with the OS caching, probably should be flushed. Using the new account is just utilizing a new cache.

 

Any idea how I can "flush" my existing account?

 

Windows\Prefetch folder, delete contents.

\Users\YourAcctName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Caches delete contents

 

Thanks, tried that... but no luck Guess it's something else.

 

Has anyone found a solution yet? I have the same problem since the last win10 major update. I deactivated windows defender totally, wiped and reinstalled the drivers multiple times, deleted user / windows cache, created a new windows profile, etc. I still have no luck and I dont want to format and reinstall the whole machine. I guess it has sth to do with the .NET drivers/versions?!

Just starting and using the ccc takes about 10-15% CPU usage of my 7700HQ

 

@Sebl @djsubtronic I know this is an old thread but I have the same issue - I'm curious what your settings are for your environment values for your account?

Login on your normal account and check:
Start->Type "environment" -> Choose "Edit Environment variables for your account"

What do you see here? I have a lot of stuff in mine - not sure what they do though - not sure if Clevo software adds some of these or not.

 

I actually stopped using CCC in favour of the Obsidian Tools. 100x better, highly recommended. There is a thread on here for it.
But to answer your question, I don't have all those CL_ / GPU_ variables.