

In the registry you can change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NPF\Start from 0x3 (SERVICE_DEMAND_START) to 0x2 (SERVICE_AUTO_START) or 0x1 (SERVICE_SYSTEM_START).Īs the driver is already started you can run Wireshark as user all the time.ĭisadvantage: Every local user can always capture live data. (This must be run as Administrator under Vista.) In the driver properties you can set the startup type as well as start and stop the driver manually.įrom the command line you can run sc config npf start= auto
WIRESHARK WINDOWS VISTA DRIVERS
You can change the start settings of the NPF service to "automatic" or "system" at any time using the following methods:įrom the Device Manager you can select View->Show hidden devices, then open Non-Plug and Play Drivers and right click on NetGroup Packet Filter Driver. The easiest way to do this is to select Start WinPcap service "NPF" at startup in the Wireshark installer. Start the NPF driver automatically at system start There are three possible solutions to start Wireshark with the privilege to capture:ĭisadvantage: It's very unsecure running Wireshark this way as every possible Wireshark exploit will be running with the administrator account being able to compromise the whole system. Please note that this is not a limitation of the Wireshark implementation, but of the underlying WinPcap driver see this note in the WinPcap FAQ. It might not be desirable that any local user can also capture from the network while the driver is loaded, but this can't be currently circumvented. Note: Simply stopping Wireshark won't stop the WinPcap driver!

Once the driver is loaded, every local user can capture from it until it's stopped again. The WinPcap driver (called NPF) is loaded by Wireshark when it starts to capture live data. If you are running inside a virtual machine, make sure the host allows you to put the interface into promiscous mode.
