Monitor settings randomly change

Three triggers that cause Philips monitors to race: One makes NO logical sense

I identified three triggers that cause the Philips monitor settings to change to Gamer 2 100% of the time:

• Trigger 1: Having the monitors go to sleep and waking them.
• Trigger 2: Booting or rebooting PC.
• Trigger 3: I replicated this final trigger at least 10x and it makes no sense to me. When I change the VPN location (i.e. VPN server location using a paid VPN app/service) on my PC, all three of my Philips monitors change to Gamer 2. This cause-and-effect between VPN and display settings makes absolutely no logical sense to me. Does anyone have a reasonable explanation for this behavior?

Does this third trigger make any sense to anyone? How or why would changing VPN location settings trigger this issue?

Also, is everyone experiencing this issue using an HP PC? It seems that most if not all reported issues are HP. Just checking...

The startup of laptop causes change for sure , but the root cause may not be the VPN or network cause I do not have a VPN and it still does change.

A user also mentioned some or any toggle in sidebar setting (win + a) causes flicker which did that day when i tried but not now

My monitor has setlled down to smartimage OFF now eventually and does not change to gamer mode other than during startup.

I used to change back to off again and again when it had changed (I do not know if smartImage is actualy smart AI that remembers turning to off) but after I always changed back to OFF every time it has eventually settles down to OFF and never causes problem during work.

My problem is going back to RACING mode again and again. Every time I think when I found a solution it comes back at random interval. Sometime 'resetting' through the buttons on the bottom (underneath) of the display I get another 20-30 minutes staying in the OFF mode which I despepartely want!

In addition to your 3 Triggers I can add a number 4: Starting WSL on my system always sets the display mode back to RACING!!!

Had hoped that with the April patches (installed yesterdag) the behavior would disappea. It didn't. HELP ME

It seems that every time when my Philips (external) monitor 346E2C switches back to RACING mode a particular file is modified. The file is located in the directory AppData\Local\HP\HP Display Handler

For each day there is a new file with the name which contains the date. For today it is: HP Display Handler.log.20240517.active with its complete path:

AppData\Local\HP\HP Display Handler\HP Display Handler.log.20240517.active

Through procmon I get the impression that the program responsible is:
Description: InsightsProcessInfo

Company: HP Inc.

Name: ProcInfo.exe

Version: 1.0.4.2

Path: C:\ProgramData\HP\Telemetry\collectors\hp-telemetry-peripheral-collector_ver_3.0.4737034\ProcInfo.exe

Command Line: C:\ProgramData\HP\Telemetry\collectors\hp-telemetry-peripheral-collector_ver_3.0.4737034\ProcInfo.exe --hpdisplay C:\windows\TEMP\ProcInfo.xml

Anybody any clue what is going on???

Whaauw, I think (again) I found a solution. Or should I say I found what has been causing my external display issue since Febr 8th 2024.

First of all my platform is an HP Envy X360 2-in1 Laptop 15-ey0xxx

Productnumer 6F814EA#ABH, configured with 16GB of RAM
Installed OS Windows 11 version 23H2 (Build 22631.3593)

Have installed all available patches through Windows Update, including all optional patches!

My external display is connected through HDMI:

Philips 346E2C (34 inch Wide curved LCD MONITOR)

Internal display of laptop is NOT used/configured (only use external display: display 2).

My challenges: Since febr 8th 2024 my external display is (more or less) randomly setting the display into 'racing mode'. This mode can be changed manually through some knobs on the display (8 different settings) or thgouth the appplication SmartControl (which I downloaded from the Philips website). There was a specific situation in which the challenge reoccured again and again. After starting WSL (Ubuntu) the display always switched back into racing mode! So frustrating. And more over it changed back at random intervals.

Many people reported more or less the same challenge (switching back to racing mode). However no where a solution so far. I got more and more frustrated by this cause it takes me lots of time to readjust the display day after day since Febru 8th 2024.

First I discovered that almost every time that the display got reset an action was reported in the directory: %APPDATA\Local\HP\HP Display Handler\ where a logfile got stored for every day since the challenge started: ie. HP Display Handler.log.20240517.active

Then I started to use procmon from the Sysinternal Suite! And I got to learn the a process accessed the logfile in the directory HP Display Handler. The process: C:\ProgramData\HP\Telemetry\collectors\hp-telemetry-peripheral-collector_ver_3.0.4737034\ProcInfo.exe

OK, Next step now is to rename the directory where the ProcInfo.exe file is stored to a different name. For now: C:\ProgramData\HP\Telemetry\collectors\OLD___hp-telemetry-peripheral-collector_ver_3.0.4737034\ProcInfo.exe

REBOOTED THE SYSTEM AND SO FAR SO GOOD!!!!

I checked the Windows Update History log
ON February 8th 2024 installed: HP Inc. - SoftwareComponent 1.64.3526.0
Guess that this patch has been causing me headaches!!!

OH NO
Not again! On May 22nd installed HP Inc. - SoftwareComponent - 1.66.3762.0 and the problem is back. Directory C:\ProgramData\HP\Telemetry\collectors\hp-telemetry-peripheral-collector_ver_3.0.4737034 is reinstalled. Changed name of directory again!!! Reboot and problem disappeared