A recent scan of a Windows XP SP3 computer system with HijackThis displayed the following entry in the results: O10 – Unknown file in Winsock LSP: c:\windows\system32\nwprovau.dll. Nwprovau.dll is usually installed for the IPX / SPX protocol, something that is rarely – if at all – used anymore these days. It is still in most cases a legit dynamic link library and most would suggest leaving it alone because of this. It is on the other hand not really needed if Netware is not being used on the computer system.
It is however not possible to fix the item directly in HijackThis. A portable software program called LSP-Fix comes to the rescue. It has been primarily designed to fix Winsock errors.
The program is interesting in this case as it can be used to remove the nwprovau.dll dynamic link library from the computer system. The box “I know what I’m doing” has to be checked before that option becomes available. The program lists the currently installed dll files in the left column, nwprovau.dll should be one of them. All that needs to be done is to select this dll and click on the arrow that is pointing to the right to move it to the Remove column. Keep in mind that this will remove the dll permanently from the computer system (creating a backup before proceeding might be a good idea)
A click on the Finish button will complete the process and remove all files that are listed in the Remove column from the computer system.
Related posts:
Fix Winsock Errors With Winsock RepairWindows Explorer File Extension Column
File Synchronization With Free File Sync
Hijack This 2.0 beta
Better File Management with Open++
File Information
File Extensions Identification
Secure File Deletion and Data Shredding
3 Responses to “Unknown File in Winsock LSP NWPROVAU.DLL”
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[...] LSP Fix is an alternative to Winsock Repair. It makes it easier to deal with LSP related problems as it will list all of them in its interface with the option to remove only selected ones from the computer system. [...]
I have scanned the system with HijackThis but I do not see any reference to
O10 – Unknown file in Winsock LSP
That’s good! That means you don’t have any “unknown files” in Winsock LSP.
If you ran LSP-Fix you probably would see just the three listed in the image above.