HP Supplied osdmanager.exe--CPU hog of the worst kind!

[benedict1]

For a few days my Touchsmart 520-1010t was slowing down.  Why?  I opened Process Explorer, a really great free utility you can download, and something called osdmanager.exe was eating up from 50-70% of my CPU!  Over 40% of physical resources were committed to it also.  I contacted HP Chat tech who was not really much help.  He couldn't tell me much about it except "it handles onscreen things like volume control, etc......."  After some griping on my part he finally said "Yes" it can be uninstalled and not very much happens.

The thing was created by some outfit called Display Portraits, Inc.  It is now gone, removed through Add/Remove Programs function.  I see no discernible effects due to its absence and my CPU usage is now back to the routine 5-10% "coasting" range.  Of course it always goes up when opening a new program or when using something intensive like a DVD player.  I am not a "gamer" so don't know if the thing was important or not.  I opened up the Touchsmart Magic Canvas or whatever it is called and it said that since a program function was removed I had to adopt one of the Windows 7 Aero schemes for display.  I did.  Everything works as before.

Have any of you had to dealt with this piece of junk too?  All of a sudden it appeared running happily along.  I suspect it came with an HP update.  Henceforth I will monitor those closely because I don't want it back.

If others have this problem, and a few quick Google searches showed I was not alone, many of them being complaints dated in the last few weeks, please chime in and let's try to get HP to explain this thing or just get rid of it before it nails other folks.

[jraff]

When I checked the OSDmanager it was using 90 to 98% CPU

The mous would not move, or move very hop skip jump, not very helpful.

I used task manager to turn it off, and preso the mouse now moves as expected.

Tell HP they have a BAD software that need major work or get someone new to right the application properly!

[benedict1]

If you turn it off it will just start again when you reboot.  The guy I talked to at HP said that.  He was the one who told me to take it out.  I have no regrets.  Crummy piece of HP code.  Nobody seems to care about it either.

[Ortho_Fan]

OSDManager, which is one of the software components of "HP My Display," is not listed as a stand-alone application in Windows 7 uninstaller.   How were you able to uninstall it?  I hesitate to uninstall the entire program suite because I'm afraid that if I do, when I re-boot, all I'll see is a black screen.

Please advise.

OF

[Axel_R]

I was running MicroCFD Virtual Wind Tunnel on my HP-Omni 220q, and to my surprise it ran very slow today, especially in multi-core mode. Sure enough, OSDManager32.exe was the culprit when I checked in Task Manager; for some reason though it never interfered before.

After I uninstalled the HP My Display Touchsmart OSD application, the Virtual Wind Tunnel was running 3x faster again on quad-core. Other than the enhanced performance, I have not noticed any difference after removing this OSD application, thus I would highly recommend to get rid of it.

[KRLynn]

I went into Administrative Tools and then Services. Look for 2: one named "Portrait Displays Display Tune Service" and the other "Portrait Display SDK Service." I picked these based solely on their reference to "Portrait Display". First I stopped them and then set them to Manual (be sure to click on Apply). This has seemed to work. I no longer see OSDManager.exe showing up as a process in Task Manager after two or three restarts, and there is no evidence of it hogging resources (it frequently sat at about 25% on my Z1).

I also don't miss any functionality. I can still right click on the desktop, select My HP Display (which I assume would be missing if I had uninstalled it), and make display adjustments (e.g., brightness). It just isn't running in the background, or at least not to the same extent, and whatever it's no longer doing I don't know enough to care about so far.

[Ortho_Fan]

Interestingly enough, I stumbled upon that same solution a few weeks ago, and posted this message about it --

see:  http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Deskpro-EVO/OSDManager-exe-maxing-out-CPU-99-percent-at-st...

So far, and I'm knocking wood, it seems to work.  I HAVE noticed that OSDManager still loads on my system, but about five minutes or so after start-up or re-booting the PC.

I would guess that the reason for the freeze is the fact that when it starts up automatically, it clashes for disc space with another application. 

In any event, I'm leaving the "manual" setting as-is.

Thank you for posting this here.  It reconfirms that other's have had this problem and found a work-around. 

O.F.

[KRLynn]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I just checked and OSDManager.exe still shows as running in Processes but the two (presumably) related services remain stopped, and I have yet to notice OSDManager.exe misbehaving. Will post back here if that changes.

[Ortho_Fan]

Well, it happened again just yesterday!  My PC started up just fine, but when OSDManager.exe loaded--about five minutes later with the settings adjustment described above, it consumed 99 Percent of the system resources, and I had to kill the process.

The only thing I can think of is, I had watched a youtube video prior to turning off my PC for the night, and did not readjust the volume setting to zero which I always do  because I don't like listening to the startup jingle.  Perhaps this fouled up something, I don't know.  In any event, I just filed a bug report with Portrait Displays.

Along this line, PEOPLE WHO ARE EXPERIENCING THIS PROBLEM, please take the time to notify the Portrait Display technical department, directly, by filling out the forum that appears on this page, and sending a help request --

http://www.portrait.com/scripts/support_contact_dtune.php?OEM=hpw&ULANG=enu&PRODUCT=dtune

You may wish to include the link to this page in your description of the problem, so they can see this is NOT a unique situation.

If enough people come forward, perhaps they will issue a fix that will end this nonsense once and for all.

Ortho_Fan

[benedict1]

The only sure-fire way to do this is to kill it and remove it.  I have not experienced any issues since doing this 6 months ago and CPU cycles are now mine, not some hog ill-conceived code package.  I am not a gamer or video person so I don't know how such app's would work.  I am happy.