Hi, I’m having two related issues with Razer Cortex after a recent update/reinstall.
A few days after updating Cortex, I noticed strange CPU usage from Cortex while my laptop was idle. I had finished playing a game, Cortex restored Windows from boost mode, then I watched something in Firefox, closed that, and left the PC alone for around 1–2 hours. Suddenly my laptop fans started spinning loudly. I checked Process Lasso and saw that the Razer Cortex process was the CPU culprit, even though I was not gaming or scanning anything.
Because of that, I applied a mild CPU-throttling rule in Process Lasso, but only to the main Razer Cortex process. It was not a system-wide CPU throttle, and it was not applied to Epic Games.
The next day, with that Process Lasso rule still active, I installed a new game using a dedicated/manual installer. Then I opened Cortex and pressed Refresh in My Library so it could detect the new game. During that refresh, all of my installed Epic Games titles disappeared from the Cortex library. After that, they never came back through normal refresh/scanning.
I removed the Process Lasso rule immediately after that and tried many fixes, including:
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restarting and refreshing Cortex multiple times
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deleting Cortex cache/database files
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checking/repairing registry values related to Epic
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uninstalling my Epic games
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uninstalling Epic Games Launcher
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reinstalling the latest Epic Games Launcher from the official Epic website
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reinstalling all my Epic games
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uninstalling and reinstalling Razer Cortex
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cleaning leftover Cortex/Razer files before reinstalling
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rebooting between cleanup/reinstall steps
One thing I noticed: my old Epic install used to point to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Epic Games\Launcher\Portal\Binaries\Win32\EpicGamesLauncher.exe
After reinstalling Epic with the current official installer, the launcher now points to:
C:\Program Files\Epic Games\Launcher\Portal\Binaries\Win64\EpicGamesLauncher.exe
Epic itself works fine. The games are installed and launch normally through Epic.
Cortex also partly works: if I launch an Epic game manually through Epic, Cortex detects the running game, Auto-Boost activates, and then that game gets added/kept in Cortex’s library.
But the problem is that Cortex still does not discover the rest of my installed Epic games through Refresh / automatic library scanning. It only seems to detect Epic games after I manually launch them once.
So it looks like live game detection / Auto-Boost works, but the Epic library scanner/importer is not detecting installed Epic games anymore.
There is also a second issue after reinstalling Cortex:
Before I fully cleaned/reinstalled Cortex, I still had the boost option to close/kill Windows Explorer / explorer.exe during boosting. That option was very important to me and was one of the main reasons I used Cortex.
After reinstalling Cortex fresh, that option is now gone from the Game Booster / Boost menu. I do not see a custom section either, so I cannot manually add explorer.exe to be closed during boost.
This is confusing because I was already on the latest Cortex version before reinstalling, and the Explorer kill switch was still visible then. My guess is that my old upgraded install may have kept some legacy config/profile setting that made the option appear, but after clean reinstall that setting was removed or reset.
I did make backups of the old Razer/Cortex files before reinstalling, so if this option is stored in a config file somewhere, I may be able to restore or compare it.
So I need help with two things:
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Why does Cortex no longer detect installed Epic games through library refresh, even though Epic works and Cortex can Auto-Boost games launched manually through Epic?
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How can I get the old “Close explorer.exe” / Explorer kill switch back in Game Booster? Was it removed from new installs, hidden behind a setting, or stored in an old config file?
Any help would be appreciated. I really want the Explorer option back because it made the boosting experience much smoother for me.