What is ETD Control Center and can I disable it?

You may see the ETD Control Center in the Task Manager if you are a laptop user. It is a startup software, hence, it starts by itself every time you turn on your laptop. Users who do not know about this software may consider it a virus or malware. If you are wondering what ETD Control Center is, this article will help you understand. We will also see whether you can disable it or not.

What is ETD Control Center?

ETD (Elan Trackpad Device) Control Center is a software developed by ELAN Microelectronics for ELAN touchpads. If your laptop has the LAN touchpad, you will find this software installed on your system. A touchpad or a trackpad is a piece of hardware installed on all laptops that allows users to control the mouse cursor on the laptop screen. In addition to moving a mouse cursor on the screen, the touchpad has some additional gestures that provide users with additional features. You can use touchpad gestures for different purposes, like minimizing and maximizing the screen, scrolling up, down, left, and right, opening right-click context menu, etc.

To use different touchpad gestures, you have to use multiple fingers. Hence, these gestures are also called multi-finger operations on a touchpad. The ETD Control Center is responsible for multi-finger operation on a trackpad.

The ETD Control Center is an executable file, named ETDCtrl.exe. It is located on your C drive at the following location:

C:\Program Files\Elantech

To go to the ETDCtrl.exe file location, copy the above path, paste it into the address bar of File Explorer, and hit Enter. Alternatively, you can use the following steps:

Press the Ctrl + Shift + Esc keys. This will open the Task Manager.
In the Task Manager, go to the Details tab.
Scroll down and locate the ETDCtrl.exe file.
Once you find it, right-click on it and select Open file location.

You can also view the digital signatures of the ETDCtrl.exe file to confirm whether it is a genuine file or not. To do so, go to the location where it is located on your computer. Now, right-click on it and select Properties. When the Properties window appears on your screen, go to the Digital Signatures tab. Under the Signature list, select the Name of signer and hit the Details button. After that, you will see the signer information. If you click on the Certificate button, you will see the certificate information.

What is ETD Control Helper?

If you scroll down the running processes in the Task Manager, you will see the ETD Control Center Helper just below the ETD Control Center. It is an executable file, named ETDCotrolHelper.exe. It is a part of the ELAN Pointing Device driver. While ETD Control Center controls the touchpad gestures, the ETD Control Center Helper is a process that supports ETD Control Center.

Can I disable ETD Control Center?

Now, you have understood that ETD Control Center is a genuine file and not a virus or malware. Let’s talk about whether you can disable it or not. We have explained earlier in this article that the ETD Control Center is responsible for controlling touchpad gestures. Hence, it is necessary for the multi-finger operation of a touchpad. If you disable it, one of the following things will happen:

All the touchpad gestures will stop working
Some of the touchpad gestures will stop working
Touchpad gestures will work but not as expected

I disabled it on my laptop and after disabling it, some of my touchpad gestures stopped working.

If you want to disable the ETD Control Center, you can do this via the Task Manager. Follow the steps written below:

Open the Task Manager.
Make sure that you have selected the Processes tab.
Scroll down and locate ETD Control Center.
Once you find it, right-click on it and select End Task.

After following the above steps, the ETD Control Center will be disabled on your system. But if you restart your computer, it will get started automatically. Hence, if you prevent it from starting automatically on system startup, you have to Disable it in Startup apps.

I hope this helps.