Killing the “killernetworkmanagerlauncher” link error on startup

Be the first to vote!

One of my devices came with the frustrating “Killer Networking” package from Intel. The only thing it kills is performance, causing noticeable delays in accessing SharePoint Online sites or other properties where round-trip time between your device and the target host is important.

Background

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the Killer Networking suite, it’s basically Intel’s attempt at providing some level of quality-of-service (QoS) for traffic. Most of the community, however, agrees that it’s a “does more harm than good” product.

And, at some point, after you try to remove components of it, you start seeing amazing startup dialog boxes like this:

Ugh.

Removal

You’re here. And help is on the way.

  1. Launch an elevated PowerShell prompt.
  2. Copy/paste the following into the prompt (or save it as a .ps1 and execute it in the elevated prompt):
    $RivetPackages = @('KillerControlCenter','Killer','RivetNetworks')
    Foreach ($package in $RivetPackages)
         {
              Get-AppxPackage $package -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Remove-AppxPackage -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
              Get-AppxPackage $package -AllUsers -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Remove-AppxPackage -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue 
         }
    $task = Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName "Killer Startup Task" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    If ($task) { Unregister-ScheduledTask -TaskName "Killer Startup Task" -Confirm:$false }

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.