Applications Systems

Remove Npcap driver after disabling Connection Quality polling in SolarWinds SAM

This article describes how to use a SAM template to remove the Npcap driver from Windows nodes after disabling Connection Quality polling for the Application Dependencies feature. SAM automatically removes the driver plugin deployed to a node to support the gathering of TCP metrics, but customers can remove the actual driver using the Uninstall Npcap 0.93.apm-template linked to from this article, if necessary.

First published date

11/15/2018 3:24 AM

Last published date

12/23/2025 5:04 PM

Overview

If you disable the Connection Quality Settings option on the Application Connection Settings page, SAM stops gathering TCP metrics for connections between applications and monitored nodes but continues to gather basic connection data during polling. The status of Latency and Packet loss entities appears as Unknown on the Connection Details page and SAM removes the ADMConnectionQuality plugin that delivered the NPcap driver to monitored Windows nodes but does not remove the NPcap driver itself.

This article describes how to remove the driver from Windows nodes with a Uninstall Npcap 0.93.apm-template that includes a PowerShell script.

To learn more about this feature in general, see Monitor application dependencies in SAM.
To learn about using PowerShell scripts in SAM, see the SAM Custom Template Guide.

Product section

Server Application Monitor

Resolution

To remove the Npcap driver from a node:
  1. Download the Uninstall Npcap 0.93.apm-template.ZIP file.
  2. Extract ZIP file contents to your local drive
  3. Import the Uninstall Npcap 0.93.apm-template into SAM. See Import and Export SAM templates.
  4. Navigate to Settings > SAM Settings > Manage Assigned Application Monitors and assign the Uninstall Npcap template to the target Windows node. See Assign a template to a node for details.
  5. Wait for the next polling cycle to finish.
  6. Navigate to the Application Monitor pop-up for the node to check the App Status.
If the App Status value in the Application Monitor pop-up is "App is Up" for a node, the Npcap driver was removed and you can remove the template from node on the Settings > SAM Settings > Manage Assigned Application Monitors page.
 
The following table describes possible outcomes after using the Uninstall Npcap 0.93.apm-template, based on the App Status value displayed in the Application Monitor pop-up and the resulting message.
App StatusMessageDescription
UpNpcap 0.93 uninstalled.The Npcap 0.93 driver was successfully removed from the node.
UpNpcap didn't find on target machine.No Npcap 0.93 driver was found. No change occurred.
WarningVersion of Npcap <version> is different than expected 0.93, leaving Npcap installedThe Npcap driver is a different version, indicating it was not deployed by ADM. No change occurred.
CriticalUninstall of Npcap 0.93 executed but it was not removed from the machine.The Npcap driver could not be removed. Contact SolarWinds Customer Support Information.