Can I skip "Finding Local Interfaces"?

edit

And for those with a more modern view, the PowerShell equivalents (also requiring an elevated prompt) are:

Set-Service npcap -StartupType Manual

and to start\stop the service

Start-Service npcap
Stop-Service npcap

again swapping "npcap" with "npf" for WinPcap.

Thanks @grahamb - I guess I'm on the "Old School" track :-)

There's hope for you yet @Jasper!

Note that, as per bug 15126, there are two parts to "Finding local interfaces" - there's finding the interfaces that libpcap/WinPcap/Npcap knows about and there's finding the extcap interfaces. The "It's really slow" part tends to be the extcap part; disabling the driver for WinPcap/Npcap on Windows only eliminates the "finding the interfaces that libpcap/WinPcap/Npcap knows about" part, so if disabling the driver doesn't speed things up significantly, the problem is with extcap.

In my case I wonder why, but extcap doesn't seem to be the problem - especially my tower PC starts Wireshark in fractions of a second compared to multiple seconds after I disable npcap

so... I did as suggested...

C:\windows\system32>sc config npf start= demand

[SC] ChangeServiceConfig SUCCESS

... but there was no big payoff :-(. It still takes ~30 seconds to load. Guy Harris' comment indicates that the problem is with extcap, yeah?. Is there a remedy for that problem?

Thx everyone for the "active engagement" on this question! There's no better forum on the planet!!

feenyman99

Your problem might be with extcap. Jasper's problem is with *pcap.

As this is Windows, Wireshark is probably installed in C:\Program Files\Wireshark. If so, see if there's a directory C:\Program Files\Wireshark\extcap, with files such as android dump.exe in it. If so, rename that directory to, for example, C:\Program Files\Wireshark\NOTextcap, and see if that speeds up loading.

As it turns out, C:\Program Files\Wireshark\extcap exists, but is EMPTY. There's no sense renaming it, right?

As it turns out, C:\Program Files\Wireshark\extcap exists, but is EMPTY.

You probably didn't install the extcap programs; that might be an option at install time.

There's no sense renaming it, right?

Probably, as all Wireshark would do is scan the directory, find nothing, and run nothing. Renaming it would test whether that presumably-quick operation isn't, in fact, quick, though.

Also, you might try uninstalling WinPcap or Npcap, to see whether there's a delay due to loading and starting WinPcap/Npcap up.