Synaptics/Conexant flow.exe problem

[bi_dh]

Hello, I had troubles with my browser Brave from time to time, once a month maybe.

Out Of Memory error, I had to relaunch the browser. No big deal.

Now it's several times a day.

I tried to look in the task manager without success, nothing weird.

Until I looked in Win10 ressources monitor and I saw a process Flow.exe with validation at 9712204 kilobytes.

That Flow.exe didn't show up in task manager.

So I went to look in Windows Event Viewer -> System

Then finally I saw many Event 2004 Resource exhaustion detector 

Windows successfully diagnosed a low virtual memory condition. The following programs consumed the most virtual memory: Flow.exe (1784) with 9941958656 bytes, 

I found some links pertaining that problem.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Unanswered-Topics-Desktops/Can-I-replace-or-work-around-Conexant-Audio...

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Audio/Conexant-Flow/td-p/6019122

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Software-and-How-To-Questions/flow-exe-HUGE-CPU-USAGE/m-p/659...

That one link being the most useful to get rid of the **bleep** problem that has been here since 2016 now.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Audio/Flow-exe-spikes-to-20-CPU-and-causes-sporadic-windows-f...

[bi_dh · Accepted solution]

And why does this forum keeps asking me to login again and again.... And again!

I launched services.msc then stopped and put on manual

CxAudioSvc

CxUIUSvc

CxUtilSvc

And killed the Flow.exe process.

Let see if it's enough to stop Flow.exe to restart at the next boot.

EDIT

Ok it was enough to stop Flow.exe to start but you lose the HP audio panel software but still have audio.

Now, after a few reboots without trouble, I re-enabled those 3 services to autostart to check if the problem persisted.

So far so good, Flow.exe stays at around 57000 bytes.

EDIT 2

It didn't work out on the long term. Flow.exe again started to consume all available virtual memory. Leading to Resource-Exhaustion-Detector Event 2004.

Now, what was the cause of the Flow.exe exhausting virtual memory with 9941958656 bytes ?

And causing Out Of Memory errors suddenly.

For future references in case of future audio problems:

I found where the Flow.exe and SmartAudio3.exe are:

C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\22094SynapticsIncorporate.AudioControls_1.3.99.0_x64

So you'll need to follow these instructions to be able to rename them in the WindowsApps folder.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/what-is-windows-apps-hidden-folder-and-why-can...