[SOLVED] How to PERMANENTLY get rid of Microsoft GameInput & Gaming Services ?

[Davoda1]

No matter what I do it will reinstall itself. I do not use xbox or any of its components and I have tried EVERYTHING that can be found online. Nothing works permanently, in a few days it will reinstall this malware.

Please I desperately need help.

 

[helpstar]

it´s a component of windows. Even if you don´t use it directly, windows will need it.

Why do you wanna get rid of it?

 

[Davoda1]

GameInput constantly crashing the computer and no matter what I do it keeps reinstalling itself.
I just want to FINALLY get PERMANENTLY rid of this trash virus. Sadly I need windows for work and I cannot just go to ❤️Linux❤️ without it being a constant headache.

 

[Davoda1]

Maybe can I just tag it as a virus with kaspersky and that would solve it? But how is it possible that I as the "owner" of my PC cannot decide that I don't want gameinput to run at all. Even if I block it inside services and autoruns it will re-enable itself within a few days.


I was thinking of creating a delayed script to run on startup:
msiexec.exe /uninstall "the code for GameInput as it is would be uninstalled via the UI in settings" /q
just I don't know that the code is.


something like
#code here to test for GameInput installed status if it is installed just exit
msiexec.exe /uninstall "{1F2B6AF3-C260-8666-5950-E3FEDBC851D6}" /q

 

[Math Geek]

getting rid of it is one thing. keeping it gone is another.

next (and every) update and it will be put right back. your wants don't matter as it is not your pc anymore, but rather it belongs to MS and they will do with it what they please!!

 

[Davoda1]

getting rid of it is one thing. keeping it gone is another.

next (and every) update and it will be put right back. your wants don't matter as it is not your pc anymore, but rather it belongs to MS and they will do with it what they please!!

Yeah I know that's just life nowadays. But what I'm thinking now is to have a powershell script run with a 30 min delay on startup to uninstall GameInput. I found the ID to do it and it "should" work. Just I need some code to search for the ID if it's missing or not because that could cause an issue or the very least an annoying error pop-up. So with this even if it reinstalls itself it will be automatically deleted on every startup. And it will only reinstall itself after a restart only. So even if annoying and BS it's at least an automated "solution"

 

[Colif]

did you try any of the fixes suggested here? (don't download or buy anything) - https://www.minitool.com/news/microsoft-gameinput-is-crashing-the-pc.html

 

[Davoda1]

did you try any of the fixes suggested here? (don't download or buy anything) - https://www.minitool.com/news/microsoft-gameinput-is-crashing-the-pc.html

i did everything and I don't even use xbox anything

 

[Davoda1]

Anyway my "solution is this...
1)
creating a shortcut to powershell script to run on startup
C:\Users\$user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\{here}

2)
script
Start-Sleep -Seconds 1800
if ((Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | select-String "{1F2B6AF3-C260-8666-5950-E3FEDBC851D6}") -eq $null){
#package doesnt exist --> do nothing
[console]::beep(2000,500)
}else{
msiexec.exe /uninstall "{1F2B6AF3-C260-8666-5950-E3FEDBC851D6}" /q
[console]::beep(500,300)
}

3)
hopefully it'll work... (?)

 

[ubuysa]

GameInput constantly crashing the computer...

What evidence do you have that it's GameInput that's causing these crashes?

 

[Corwin65]

What evidence do you have that it's GameInput that's causing these crashes?

^This

 

[Colif]

What evidence do you have that it's GameInput that's causing these crashes?

should get him to show you crash dumps as I read in one answer that looking at them might help.

 

[ubuysa]

That's why I'm asking. You need to be certain that GameInput really is the sour e of the crashes. I've seen nothing yet to show that it is.

 

[Davoda1]

What evidence do you have that it's GameInput that's causing these crashes?

1) From the crash report that says it
2) From the reliability history where GI reconf. and the crash timestamps are exactly the same
3) It being a well known and multiple years old bug that effected thousands of people of just those I could found that made comments about it
4) since I started to manually uninstall and delete all files related to it no crash/freezing/BSOD/"lagginess"/etc have occurred at all what so ever

So it is the GameInput malware that's causing the issue. Sadly I have to use Windows and I cannot just switch completely to ❤️Linux❤️ but if it will work that I did as a workaround, as long as ms will not try to sabotage it, it will do. I'll update the post in a few days when inevitably it will reinstall itself, since I'm clearly a cashcow who can pay for stuff but cannot own anything.

And sorry that the tone may look accusatory, but it's not my intention; I'm greatly appreciate the help of this forum/community; just ms can f itself.

 

[ubuysa]

Perhaps if you uploaded any dumps, event logs, and other data to the cloud we could help interpret it for you.

 

[Davoda1]

Perhaps if you uploaded any dumps, event logs, and other data to the cloud we could help interpret it for you.

Sadly I dont have the full memory dumps, but keeping GameInput:
A) permanently uninstalled by in some way disabling it from reinstalling itself or fooling the system to see it as installed so it wouldn't do it; what i'm doing now (if it work) would be a workaround but not optimal.
B) disabling it from running, I have once put it in services to manual (possible disabled but I don't think I picked that) and it didn't stop it from running. And in autoruns I could remove it from the registry or disabling all components there but I don't know if that would work.

and trying to allow it to gather more information in my opinion is pointless sine just by uninstalling the GameInput manually from the computer solves every issue with everything working and working better. It is just the question how to keep it from downloading itself (which might be impossible) or at the very least make it impossible for it to run in any way or circumstance, since I don't use anything that would use it anyway and I know it is my issue that would be a solution as well.

 

[Davoda1]

So what I was thinking of is what does windows installer / windows update / windows store etc look for to check if a file should be updated or not, is it just the version in the meta of the executable if so it could be edited with hexedit to be unusable but not trigger an update tho ever time when there is a version change it has to be done again, and it might cause issues when something tries to run it.

Kepping it from installing itself seems to be impossible no matter what; but if it's once installed, could it be successfully prevented to run permanently? Disabling it in the services didn't work for me (but it could have been an issue of me forgetting to turn something else off as well), how about in autoruns? Can any process change what I do there, or prevent it somehow from it happening for example removing all rights of all users inc. system but myself.

To me these are the possibilities and also could be useful to get rid of all the other windows components I or anyone else don't want or at the very least a lot of it.

Sadly in my experience that could be that I forgot to do some arbitrary step that negated all efforts or just that windows will overwrite every setting sooner or later and it's just a case of you don't own anything you buy.

I really don't know what the case is but since I cannot afford to let by PC restart whenever it feels like to try out multiple different possibilities or that since it occurs randomly without any patter at all it could take weeks and in the meantime I cannot safely use the computer which isn't an option. So theoretical solutions is the best I have. And that's not that useful.

 

[ubuysa]

GameInput might not be the root cause. It could easily be some rogue driver that is fouling up GameInupt in some way. It's often the case in BSODs that the component that appears to fail is an innocent party that's been tripped up by something else.

If you manage to capture any minidumps please upload them to the cloud with a link here. You could also export your System and Application logs and upload them to the cloud.

 

[Ralston18]

Question:

Any "GameInput" related error codes, warnings, or even informational events being captured by Reliability History/Monitor or Event Viewer?

And, I would be remiss if I did not ask, do you have a legal copy of Windows?

Windows OS - source?

If not legal then who knows what all may be going on?

If legal then try "dism" and "sfc /scannow":

Either one or both may find and fix some problem.

FYI:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-dism-command-line-utility-repair-windows-10-image

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-sfc-scannow-to-repair-windows-system-files-2626161

 

[Colif]

note: I should have remembered this detail: Gameinput was crashing on almost everyones PC there for a while, it might still be doing it on mine... but as it doesn't cause anything else to crash, its usually just reported on Reliability History.

I try not to look in reliability history as it can show you "problems" that aren't really a problem - make you think PC worse than it is. For a change, mine is not showing any errors...

I do see that gameinput still shows up every day in there, at startup, as Successful application reconfiguration... surely it doesn't need it every day so it still doesn't appear to be functioning right.

 

[ubuysa]

There is a Windows XBox game driver that does seem to cause problems for some users, its call gameflt.sys. If you're 100% certain that you're not connecting to an XBox (and not likely to) it is possible to uninstall gameflt.sys. I can't promise that this will solve your GameInput problems but in the absence of any problem determination data (dumps, logs, etc.) this is my best suggestion - because gameflt.sys is a known issue on some platforms.

If you want to try this then the first thing we need to do is to confirm that gameflt.sys is loaded, so open an elevated command prompt and enter the command...

fltmc filters

Copy the results and paste them in here.

 

[Davoda1]

GameInput might not be the root cause. It could easily be some rogue driver that is fouling up GameInupt in some way. It's often the case in BSODs that the component that appears to fail is an innocent party that's been tripped up by something else.

If you manage to capture any minidumps please upload them to the cloud with a link here. You could also export your System and Application logs and upload them to the cloud.

Yes, it can be a likely scenario that something else is causing and that just calls on MSGI, but I don't loose any functionality by not having it on my computer and having less background bloatware is always welcome anyway on Windows.
What I do know is if I uninstall just it, even if I leave the rest of the gaming services alone fixes all of my issues, and troubleshooting the root cause if it's something else or whatever the actual situation may be, it would mean that I'd have to use and work on a computer that I know that any time could freeze and the only thing I can to is to hard restart it, or wait if I will get a bsod or it "fixes" itself in time. And I cannot afford to do that. So as far as debugging or troubleshooting there isn't much (outside of what can be exported)

 

[Davoda1]

Question:

Any "GameInput" related error codes, warnings, or even informational events being captured by Reliability History/Monitor or Event Viewer?

And, I would be remiss if I did not ask, do you have a legal copy of Windows?

Windows OS - source?

If not legal then who knows what all may be going on?

If legal then try "dism" and "sfc /scannow":

Either one or both may find and fix some problem.

FYI:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-dism-command-line-utility-repair-windows-10-image

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-sfc-scannow-to-repair-windows-system-files-2626161

I have tried sfc and dism before I started uninstalling anything (as in the unreliable state of the computer) and none of them found anything. It's a legal copy of windows pro, that IF I'm not mistaken or I'm forgetting about it was updated from 10 to 11 anno. Also the motherboard was replaced (all firmware and drivers were reinstalled manually from the manufacturer's website, bios was also updated) but this issue came about 2 weeks ago; and all these changes were made months to years ago, so I don't think these have to do anything with it (tho who knows) it might be a failed update corrupting things but why don't sfc find anything about it.

Today I got a huge update dump in win updates we will se it the last part might have been the case in some weird way.

 

[Davoda1]

note: I should have remembered this detail: Gameinput was crashing on almost everyones PC there for a while, it might still be doing it on mine... but as it doesn't cause anything else to crash, its usually just reported on Reliability History.

I try not to look in reliability history as it can show you "problems" that aren't really a problem - make you think PC worse than it is. For a change, mine is not showing any errors...

I do see that gameinput still shows up every day in there, at startup, as Successful application reconfiguration... surely it doesn't need it every day so it still doesn't appear to be functioning right.

Exactly the same message as yours, that happened on startup without any issues. Just later at some point it kept doing it again and that completely locked up the computer and every time I have to use reset ot it would say in that state forever.

So one day it looked like: on startup at 8:47 it successfully reconfigured itself; and at 12:31 it did it again and that 100% locked up the computer, no blue screen just.. nothing. And that kept happening every day. But now I'm just uninstalling it when I see that it downloaded itself again, and I stopped having any issues at all.

 

[Colif]

the answer here might help - link

or 2nd last answer here

seems it was crashing lots of PC.