Deep Cleaning Tool for NetConnect ?

[Jickfoo_]

I love NetConnect but it has its share of weird issues. I have some machines that will work and then all of a sudden will never work again. Its like NetConnect gets corrupt or something. We try uninstalling/reinstalling, nothing works.. The only way to get NetConnect working again is to reimage the box.

I've had some JTAC techs tell me to remove the real Ethernet Adaptor from the networking control panel, then reinstall it. I havent tried this yet but even that seems kind of drastic. The virtual Network Connect adapter is not accessible, I cant just remove it and readd it.

Does anything exist like a deep cleaning tool for Network Connect ? I want all traces of the application removed.

All feedback is appreciated.. Thanks,

Justin

[Kevin_]

I don't know of any tool, but Juniper does publish the client-side changes guide which should provide the info you need to remove it manually. The link for 5.5 is - http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/software/ive/5.x/admin/5.5-ClientSideChanges.pdf.

For what it's worth, I use Network Connect all the time and have not experienced anything like that. Can you provide a better description of the problem? What happens when users can't connect? Are there messages in either the IVE or client logs? With debugging enabled, the logs can be extremely helpful. Good luck!

[IykeD_]

I have experienced the same exact problem reported by JickFoo above.
Was also told the same thing by JTAC - reimage, which may be a workable
solution if the user community is in the dozens.

However, while I have only seen 3 or so cases of this out of about 50
users, we have a potential 5,000 or more users and I am bothered that
there doesn't seem to be a solution. By the way, I have only seen this
problems on Dell D620 machines.

[Jickfoo_]

Well we have our share of Dell D620's here.. Perhaps its something along those lines.

Anyway, its for these reasons we've never been able to get rid of our old Nortel Contivity VPN. For some people NetConnect just doesnt work.

I wish there was a way to completely remove all traces of NetConnect, specifically the invisible virtual adapter.

[kmaybe_]

You can manually remove the NC virtual adapter by uninstalling it from the Network Adapters in the Device Manager list through the Control Panel--or, if it is not visible here, then you can delete the dsNCAdapt.sys system file from the c:\windows\system32\drivers folder which would be the equivalent of removing it from the Device Manager.

On IVE OS 5.5 and up, the virtual adapter is not removed from the client during the uninstallation of NC so you would need to manually delete it if you want to remove it from the machine altogether.

[IykeD_ · Accepted solution]

I finally figured out what the cause of the problem was. I was left with no option but to re-image
my PC again after I could not get Network Connect to start. On re-imaging, Network Connect
started working until I decided to begin the process of putting my machine back to where it was
- by reinstalling the utlilities tools and other applications that I use very often. As I went along,
all was fine until I installed Ethereal and WinPcap. Network Connect simply refused to start after
wards, meaning I was back to square one.

To make a long story short, I proceeded to uninstall Ethereal and WinPcap and that did the trick!
Luckily for this experience, days later I got a few calls from users having problems starting Network
Connect, and needless to say, each of the user has at least WinPcap installed on their machine.
Their problems were also resolved as soon as they uninstalled WinPcap. Hope that helps.

[gdavies_]

Hi IykeD,

I noticed that you said you're using Ethereal. This is somewhat OT, but have you tried Wireshark. AFAIK, there has been no development on Ethereal for ages and Wireshark is the continuation of what was Ethereal by much (if not all) of the team that used to do Ethereal. The name change is explained on the wireshark website (http://www.wireshark.org/). It uses much more recent versions of WinPcap too, so that might help.

Rgds,

Guy