Manual uninstall on macOS

Rkuzyk · 07-02-2021, 10:57 PM

Hi,

I just installed the latest Displylink drivers on my macbook, Big Sur 11.4. Clamshell would not work and I saw that you'd have to revert to 5.25 to get it to work.

In the process of trying to do so, my uninstall failed and now I'm in a limbo state. I can't run the uninstaller and when I try to reinstall the latest, I receive a message that a newer version is already installed. Yet nothing works.

Are there instructions on manually removing Displaylink from my laptop so I can start over?

Rick

russ-codes · 07-12-2021, 07:26 PM

I remember getting into a similar situation the first time I started using my dock. I also remembered writing a novel in an amazon review so I didn't forget. Here is the pertinent part of my review documenting what I did.

NOTE: I am not a display link employee and offer this as a list of steps of what I as a consumer chose to do for my own personal machine. Do not continue unless you feel comfortable with the steps as listed and do understand there is a possibility that you can make matters worse as you will be manually mucking with kernel extensions. Proceed at your own risk, i provide no guarantees that this will help you.

Excerpt you probably care about:
Upon installing the latest drivers for Mac Catalina (and following the instructions) I unfortunately found myself in a non-bootable state. Perhaps more accurate to say a non-login-able. I could boot the laptop, however when trying to login the driver would fail to load. After about 15 mins of frozen login progress bar, the mac would just reboot. This was repeatable behavior even when not plugged into the dock.

Dumbfounded at how installing a driver could possibly has this effect, I had to try to find a way to uninstall this driver so i could get back to a bootable state. The enigma - how do you run an uninstaller if you can't login? Rolling up my software-developer sleeves, I:
* booted into recovery mode (hold command + r while rebooting until you see apple emblem)
* mounted the hard drive (disk utility)
* opened a terminal (utilities/terminal)
* navigated to the uninstaller manually and executed it

No joy. This resulted in a libswyft error from the driver uninstaller related to an OS version mismatch.

Upon calling Targus support I DID quickly receive a human (great!) However, the ultimate response from Targus was a bit lackluster and in simplest terms:
"Unfortunately you've already tried more than we know how to do and no one in this office has enough Mac knowledge to help you further. We recommend you call apple and *request an OS back door* to uninstall".

I respectfully stifled a laugh envisioning Apple back-dooring me into their operating system to uninstall a naughty driver for a company who doesn't know how to uninstall it themselves. I felt a bit like Legolas in Lord of the Rings desperately trying to bring down a troll with explosives and arrow after arrow simply won't stop it - I mean.. the driver...

Suspecting hell would freeze over before Apple back doored me into their OS to uninstall a naughty driver, I eventually discovered that Targus uses DisplayLink which installs their driver as a kext (kernel extension). I was lucky enough to stumble across an article that stated the name of the driver file. I then ran a global search on my hard drive for it. Success! Found the bugger! To disable it I simply had to either delete it or rename it temporarily. The kext can be found in:
/Library/Extensions
or if you are mounting your hard drive in recovery mode:
/Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Extensions/

once you cd into the above directory, you can rename the kext with the following command:
mv DisplayLinkDriver.kext/ DisplayLinkDriver.kext~/

Renaming the kext will cause it not to be loaded on startup. After this you will finally be able to boot back up and login. Immediately upon logging back in I renamed the kext back to it's original name with:
sudo mv DisplayLinkDriver.kext~/ DisplayLinkDriver.kext/

Note: At this point if I were to reboot, I would be right back to a no-boot situation. Do not reboot at this point and be sure to do the following step!

Then I promptly ran the uninstaller (Applications/DisplayLink/DisplayLink Software Uninstaller. After running the uninstaller I verified DisplayLinkDriver.kext was indeed removed. Legolas had won. The troll was destroyed.

Full review if you needed more details I might have left out copy/pasting:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-r...SIN=B07YHYWN1X

07-02-2021, 10:57 PM	#1
Rkuzyk Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2021 Posts: 1	Manual uninstall on macOS Hi, I just installed the latest Displylink drivers on my macbook, Big Sur 11.4. Clamshell would not work and I saw that you'd have to revert to 5.25 to get it to work. In the process of trying to do so, my uninstall failed and now I'm in a limbo state. I can't run the uninstaller and when I try to reinstall the latest, I receive a message that a newer version is already installed. Yet nothing works. Are there instructions on manually removing Displaylink from my laptop so I can start over? Rick

07-12-2021, 07:26 PM	#2
russ-codes Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2020 Posts: 5	I remember getting into a similar situation the first time I started using my dock. I also remembered writing a novel in an amazon review so I didn't forget. Here is the pertinent part of my review documenting what I did. NOTE: I am not a display link employee and offer this as a list of steps of what I as a consumer chose to do for my own personal machine. Do not continue unless you feel comfortable with the steps as listed and do understand there is a possibility that you can make matters worse as you will be manually mucking with kernel extensions. Proceed at your own risk, i provide no guarantees that this will help you. Excerpt you probably care about: Upon installing the latest drivers for Mac Catalina (and following the instructions) I unfortunately found myself in a non-bootable state. Perhaps more accurate to say a non-login-able. I could boot the laptop, however when trying to login the driver would fail to load. After about 15 mins of frozen login progress bar, the mac would just reboot. This was repeatable behavior even when not plugged into the dock. Dumbfounded at how installing a driver could possibly has this effect, I had to try to find a way to uninstall this driver so i could get back to a bootable state. The enigma - how do you run an uninstaller if you can't login? Rolling up my software-developer sleeves, I: * booted into recovery mode (hold command + r while rebooting until you see apple emblem) * mounted the hard drive (disk utility) * opened a terminal (utilities/terminal) * navigated to the uninstaller manually and executed it No joy. This resulted in a libswyft error from the driver uninstaller related to an OS version mismatch. Upon calling Targus support I DID quickly receive a human (great!) However, the ultimate response from Targus was a bit lackluster and in simplest terms: "Unfortunately you've already tried more than we know how to do and no one in this office has enough Mac knowledge to help you further. We recommend you call apple and request an OS back door to uninstall". I respectfully stifled a laugh envisioning Apple back-dooring me into their operating system to uninstall a naughty driver for a company who doesn't know how to uninstall it themselves. I felt a bit like Legolas in Lord of the Rings desperately trying to bring down a troll with explosives and arrow after arrow simply won't stop it - I mean.. the driver... Suspecting hell would freeze over before Apple back doored me into their OS to uninstall a naughty driver, I eventually discovered that Targus uses DisplayLink which installs their driver as a kext (kernel extension). I was lucky enough to stumble across an article that stated the name of the driver file. I then ran a global search on my hard drive for it. Success! Found the bugger! To disable it I simply had to either delete it or rename it temporarily. The kext can be found in: /Library/Extensions or if you are mounting your hard drive in recovery mode: /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Extensions/ once you cd into the above directory, you can rename the kext with the following command: mv DisplayLinkDriver.kext/ DisplayLinkDriver.kext~/ Renaming the kext will cause it not to be loaded on startup. After this you will finally be able to boot back up and login. Immediately upon logging back in I renamed the kext back to it's original name with: sudo mv DisplayLinkDriver.kext~/ DisplayLinkDriver.kext/ Note: At this point if I were to reboot, I would be right back to a no-boot situation. Do not reboot at this point and be sure to do the following step! Then I promptly ran the uninstaller (Applications/DisplayLink/DisplayLink Software Uninstaller. After running the uninstaller I verified DisplayLinkDriver.kext was indeed removed. Legolas had won. The troll was destroyed. Full review if you needed more details I might have left out copy/pasting: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-r...SIN=B07YHYWN1X