I recently purchased a simple KVM (Greathtek USB 3.0, 2 port) from Amazon to swap peripherals between my Razer Blade (2022 15” 3070Ti) and my work laptop. Immediately, I noticed all actions on my razer blade being slowed and delay a significant amount. Mouse and keyboard inputs are lagging. Audio output is shuddering/choppy, and longer than normal loading times to launch any application or perform any action. Checked processes and performance (disk usage, CPU, memory, etc) and everything looks normal. No new process hogging up hardware. After a few minutes of use, I disconnect the KVM completely, and remove all peripherals. The issues still persist. Update windows and restart the device, and the issues are still persistent.
I perform a factory reset on the machine, rebooting to the image the laptop shipped with from the default local backup. The issues are still persistent. My work laptop (that I also plugged the KVM into) is experiencing none of these symptoms. My thoughts on cause are either:
- The KVM installed a driver that is incompatible / has some clash with Razer firmware. Possibly at the kernel level.
- This cheap KVM was malicious and has established persistence on my device. (I’ve been checking common registry locations for persistence)
Assuming the cause isn’t malware, I’m looking for additional fix actions to attempt. Or information related to the Razer firmware and how it could interact with something like a cheap KVM.
In addition, ChatGPT also provided me with the following information:
Persistent Configuration Changes: although a factory reset should revert the system to its default settings, there could be persistent configuration changes or corruption that are not resolved by the factory reset process. This could include changes to system settings or configurations made by the KVM switch or other software/hardware.
Drivers or Firmware: The KVM switch or its drivers/firmware may have caused changes to the laptop’s drivers or firmware that persist even after removing the KVM switch. This could potentially affect performance if there are compatibility issues or if the drivers/firmware are not functioning properly.