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Get rid of the Network miniports


GrofLuigi

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I don't even remember their names any more... I know all of them are related to VPN, which I don't intend to use. So if you plan on using some kind of built-in VPN protocols, forget about it. Also, my system is heavily tweaked through the years, so I might have killed some other dependencies in the meantime.

For starters, find in the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\XXX (X-es are numbers) the victims that have CHARACTERISTICS registry value in them. It is a compilation of flags, and we are interested in only one: 0x20   NCF_NOT_USER_ REMOVABLE   Component cannot be removed by the user (for example, through Control Panel or Device Manager). It might be applied also to other types of devices that seemingly are not able to be uninstalled, if need arises. But now we are interested in these. As I said, I already forgot all the names, but I killed everything that had MINIPORT in its name, and everything is running fine. We can see which device it is by looking at the DriverDesc value in the same registry kay. So, for those which I decide I want removed, I substract 0x20 (hex) from the original CHARACTERISTICS value and replace it with that.

Reboot (I haven't checked if it's absolutely necessary, but just in case) and I can remove all of them - uninstall through Device Manager. And at the end I'm left with this:

KMmdbLs.png


Beautiful, isn't it? :) Ras Async Adapter is the only one which can not be removed, it goes away and comes back, sometimes is faded, sometimes not... I live with it (for now :) ). Look 'n' Stop is the driver from the firewall, it was attached also to some of the miniports. That had to complicate something.

Oh, and I almost forgot, one of them is PPoE, which will kill your Internet connection if it is of that type. I have a direct cable connection to the router, so I don't care for any of these types.

And finally, because this is so dangerous (potentially), I tested it extensively in a virtual machine (which is a clone of my physical machine, so most things are similar).

GL

Edit: I remembered I might have done this years ago with most of the other (tunnelling) adapters like Teredo and similar... TcpIp V6 is disabled all the time.

 

Edited by GrofLuigi
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If you mean about RAS async adapter, I think it's needed and it would be a bad idea to remove it totally. I uninstalled it few times and it always came back. If I hunt down the .inf it's installed from, I might know whether it's safe to delete it, but I'm very satisfied with the situation as it is now.

I have no problems, I really posted this just to brag. :)

Edit: Oh, and in the process I downloaded the 600+ MB iso just to get devcon (Windows driver development kit I think), but it turned out it wasn't needed. :P There was another method of uninstall with devcon, but the above worked just fine. And I checked, there were no super hidden devices remaining. That was the only thing devcon was used for.



 

Edited by GrofLuigi
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5 hours ago, GrofLuigi said:

I have no problems, I really posted this just to brag. :)
 

I know :) and it's fine, I only pointed out a "better" source for devcon and hinted that maybe the services may be removed with it (normall or getting Trusted Installer credentials) without first changing those keys in the Registry. :unsure:

jaclaz


 

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