Windows Vista - Unwanted Network Adapter WAN Miniport (SSTP)

I created a account for my fiancee to use my computer (a mistake).. I have a Wireless Connection and a USB Netgear Wireless Adapter to accept the connection. It takes awhile some times to load............. ... .. . .... On her account she said she tried to get on the internet and just kept hitting yes and tried to change some settings (she's 100% computer illiterate)...

Now in device manager under Network Adapters there is My Netgear USB Adapter which is fine, that's what I want, but now there is something brand new that showed up only after she told me her troubled day on my computer. Its Called WAN Miniport (SSTP).. I have No Idea what it is, I tried to hit Uninstall, it didnt dissappear so I hit Disable.. It's still in my Network Adapters list.

What is this, how do I get rid of it?

Thank you for all of your help.

Does anybody know why or how to remove WAN Miniport (SSTP)?

WAN stands for Wide Area Network. A Miniport driver is a hardware-specific driver that manages the NIC (Network Interface Card), it sends and receives data through the NIC. Moreover, the driver also inter-communicates with higher layer/level transport protocols and drivers.

There are a few WAN Miniport drivers: WAN Miniport (IP), WAN Miniport (L2TP), WAN Miniport (PPPOE), WAN Miniport (PPTP), and optionally others such as the WAN Miniport (Network Monitor) and the WAN Miniport (SSTP).

Depending your connection requirements and other needs, some of these miniports are necessary, others are optional, or not needed at all. For example, if you are having a broadband ADSL Internet connection via PPPOE then the said Miniport driver is required. The IP and L2TP are also required along with PPTP. As a rule of thumb, the first four are required, and starting from Windows XP, the operating systems are incorporating these technologies.

Starting from Windows Vista SP1, another new Miniport driver was added. Microsoft called this Secure Socket Tunelling Protocol (SSTP) and SP1 (Service Pack 1) comes with this driver. Windows 2008 Server is shipped with this miniport driver as well. This is required in case of secure VPN tunnel connections. In a nutshell, it offers tunelling PPP traffic over a secured SSL channel. Therefore, it increases security due to encryption and traffic integrity checking.

However, Microsoft did not plan thoroughly their deployment of this driver for Windows Vista SP1. Meaning that when the Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, the WAN Miniport (SSTP) driver is not removed, thus a big yellow exclamation mark appears right to this driver in the Device Manager. Windows cannot find its driver anymore, since SP1 removed it, but the device isn't removed from the Device Manager list. This may or may not cause problems. Microsoft recommends ignoring the exclamation mark along with possible error code number 39. Now that is a pretty silly work-around, if you ask me.

Regarding what your fiancee did, I do not know. You did not even told us your operating system, which is ought to be Windows Vista. Moreover, you did not complain about having an exclamation mark (!) or anything there next to the WAN Miniport (SSTP) device, so chances are it's still fully functional (it should be in case of Vista with SP1). With the help of conventional methods you cannot remove that device - such as uninstalling or disabling. It just won't disappear.

I think that it is a safe bet assuming you are not going to need the SSTP anytime in the future as a VPN secure tunnel. Traditional VPN tunneling happens via the PPTP and uninstalling the SSTP shouldn't cause any problems whatsoever regarding standard VPN connections. And since you were asking how to remove it, here it goes: Open up an elevated command-prompt terminal, you do this by logging in as an Administrator as launching the cmd.exe as an Administrator (right click, Run as Administrator...). Then type in the following command that uninstalls the said device:

netcfg -e -u ms_sstpminiport

Should you still require sometime in the future the WAN Miniport (SSTP) driver then you can reinstall it, and here's how:

devcon.exe install %windir%\inf\netrasa.inf MS_SstpMiniport

But to do this, you need to grab DevCon from this link.

Good luck.

Later Edit: I've just noticed it says Windows Vista in the thread title. Now it makes sense.

That Helped perfectly! Thank you alot.

This removed the WAN miniport, and I also learned by research if you ever have a Device in that section you don't want right click it and view it's properties, and find it's Hardware_ID - then you can replace the netcfg -e -u <b>ms_sstpminiport</b> with the new hardware_id - make sure you don't need it first.

Be careful to uninstall SSTP.
I have tried to uninstall SSTP on Windows 7 x64.
But it uninstalled PPTP too!

And installation using link to devcon not works on x64.
You have to find devcon for x64 and it is problem.
Finally I have found it here: http:// www .miklos .ca /log/2010/11/devconexe-64-bit-version.html