I powered on my Windows 10 PC today morning and found myself seeing a black popup box from HP Display Control Service in the middle of my computer screen asking me to download and install this program from portrait.com. The question that came to my mind was that why is it not from hp.com but from some other site?
HP Display Control Service
Warning
HP Display Control Service needs to be updated.
Please update using the link below:
https://www.portrait.com/dtune/hps/enu/index/html
HP Display Control Service needs to be updated
A few things I decided to check before going forward.
The program was already installed on my clean PC and I could see it in the Control Panel.
I could see its icon sitting in my System Tray.
Right-clicking the icon and selecting Advanced opened the following window.
The Program folder was located at – C:\Program Files\Portrait Displays\HP Display Control Service.
On digging a bit I found that HP Display Control is a software program developed by Portrait Displays for HP, which adds a Windows Service (HPDCService) which runs continuously in the background. Its main executable file DisplayControl.exe is loaded at every startup via a Registry key.
The Service is named HP Display Control Service by Portrait Displays (HPDCService) and is located at:
C:\Program Files\Portrait Displays\HP Display Control Service\DisplayControlService.exe
Portrait Displays is a legit company that provides color display solutions with advanced display control.
It, therefore, looked safe to me.
I decided to download and install it, and on a restart, I found that all is working fine.
HP Display Control popup keeps re-appearing
If the popup keeps re-appearing, you can create a system restore point first and then disable HP Display Control via the Task Manager or uninstall it via Control Panel.
It is not needed and will not affect any of the main functionality.
So go ahead and install it if you plan to update the program – else you can always disable it.
