This sort of thing is a big problem throughout the Windows ecosystem, and it's mostly caused by Microsoft leaving holes in Windows' functionality to be filled by incompetent third parties. The purpose of this program was supposedly to handle hotkeys such as mute/unmute. But that's not something a third-party program should be doing at all! A typical OEM windows system will have a half-dozen pieces of crap in its system tray written by third-party hardware vendors, implementing features that a decent operating system would already have built in.
Why does the title mention HP only? Seems that any Windows computer using Conexant audio chips + driver will have the same problem. Pinning this on one specific manufacturer feels weird to me.
I just removed a fuck-ton of crapware from my new probook 17 as I do with all my new laptops this file was one of them thankfully.<p>The number of Windows 10 (Pro) processes at boot-up dropped from 112 to 80 (As a comparison it used to be 21 on Windows XP Pro but I guess that's progress)
Sounds like something for me to check. I've got an HP Envy with Conexant audio. I'm in Linux most of the time, but I've got a Windows 7 partition, too. That article mentions some version 10.x builds of the driver as being the culprits. Luckily, the newest ones on HP's site for my model are 9.x drivers, so maybe I'm safe.