Topic

WireSock uninstallation incomplete

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Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 19 total)
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  • Author
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  • June 5, 2024 at 7:13 pm #13700
    nrwe
    Participant

    When uninstalling WireSock, drivers that installed along with WireSock such as the tun driver and packet filter wouldn’t get uninstalled, causing error when installing new versions of WireSock after uninstalling old ones. To solve the problem, user has to manually remove the drivers and clear registry keys to be able to install new versions.

    Can feature be added to the program so that during uninstallation it automatically uninstalls all drivers and removes all registry keys that it previously added?

    June 6, 2024 at 3:52 am #13701
    hyde
    Participant

    A WireSock remnant cleaner would be nice.

    June 6, 2024 at 9:48 am #13706
    Vadim Smirnov
    Keymaster

    WireSock uninstall removes all components, but under some circumstances, a reboot may be required afterward. For example, some components may be marked for deletion but not immediately removed.

    June 6, 2024 at 10:12 am #13707
    nrwe
    Participant

    Yes, I did rebooted before checking, and it still has drivers (WireSock tun and Packet Filter driver) and registry keys remains, at least on my PC (Windows 11 22H2).

    June 6, 2024 at 2:29 pm #13708
    Vadim Smirnov
    Keymaster

    This is unusual; it seems the uninstallation process encountered an issue. Typically, reinstalling WireSock, rebooting, then uninstalling it again and rebooting once more resolves the problem. Additionally, if WireSock was installed as a Windows service, consider stopping and uninstalling the service before uninstalling the software.

    June 6, 2024 at 2:37 pm #13709
    Vadim Smirnov
    Keymaster

    I performed a quick install/uninstall test on Windows 11 23H2 x64 using winget to ensure everything works as expected. All driver components were removed correctly.
    If you can collect the MSI installer logs, I can investigate and try to determine what went wrong.

    June 6, 2024 at 9:43 pm #13711
    nrwe
    Participant

    I just tried uninstall, reboot, and reinstall WireSock, the problem still exists: uninstaller woundn’t remove the drivers.

    To reproduce this: uninstall the WireSock VPN Client through Control Panel and reboot, after rebooting, open Device Manager, click on the “View” tab, and select “Device by driver”, and you can see there are 2 remaining drivers “wiresock.inf” and “ndiswgc_lwf.inf”, in my case it’s oem57.inf(wiresock.inf) and oem35.inf(ndiswgc_lwf.inf).

    Although this time reinstalling didn’t throw an error. (maybe it’s because that I was reinstalling the same version I guess?)

    June 7, 2024 at 1:16 pm #13712
    Vadim Smirnov
    Keymaster

    Could you please run CMD as an Administrator and execute the following commands to uninstall the drivers:

    
netcfg -v -u nt_ndiswgc
devcon.exe remove wiresock

    To completely remove the drivers from the system, you can also execute the following:

    
cd C:/Windows/Inf
pnputil /delete-driver oem57.inf -force
pnputil /delete-driver oem35.inf -force

    Please let me know if any errors occur during this process.

    June 7, 2024 at 2:29 pm #13713
    nrwe
    Participant

    I just runned the above commands, here’s the results:

    netcfg -v -u nt_ndiswgc

    Trying to uninstall nt_ndiswgc …

    … nt_ndiswgc is not installed.

    … done.

     

    devcon.exe remove wiresock
    ‘devcon.exe’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
    operable program or batch file.

     

    After installing Windows Driver Kit:

    devcon.exe remove wiresock
    No devices were removed.

     

    pnputil /delete-driver oem57.inf -force
    Microsoft PnP Utility

    Driver package deleted successfully.

     

    pnputil /delete-driver oem35.inf -force
    Microsoft PnP Utility

    Driver package deleted successfully.

    June 7, 2024 at 2:54 pm #13715
    Vadim Smirnov
    Keymaster

    Hmm, it looks like something went wrong. After rebooting, do you see any remaining artifacts?

    June 7, 2024 at 4:12 pm #13717
    nrwe
    Participant

    The drivers in the Device Manager are gone, but there is this ndiswgc.sys file remains in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\ as well as in the registry.

    June 7, 2024 at 5:07 pm #13718
    Vadim Smirnov
    Keymaster

    It might have been a system glitch, and the NDIS filter driver wasn’t fully uninstalled. Please check if the filter driver is still visible in the network connection properties and try uninstalling it from there.

    June 8, 2024 at 2:52 am #13724
    nrwe
    Participant

    No, it’s not present in the network connection properties.

    June 8, 2024 at 3:27 pm #13726
    Vadim Smirnov
    Keymaster

    I believe the NDIS filter driver is uninstalled, and it should be safe to remove the binary files and/or registry keys, though these are unlikely to cause any issues. What about the WireSock virtual network adapter? Was it removed from Devices as well?

    June 8, 2024 at 10:42 pm #13727
    nrwe
    Participant

    Yes, it was removed (with the “pnputil /delete-driver oem57.inf -force” command).

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