When I was not able to connect to the internet using my Windows PC with latest version of Windows 10 (version 1809 also known as October 2018 update), I checked the internet adapter settings and found out a strange TAP adapter there. TAP adapters are usually installed by VPN proxy software such as Proton VPN, Touch VPN, TunnelBear etc. In my case, this is part of the VPN module installed by my antivirus software and was causing some problems with the internet connectivity even when the VPN module was disabled from the antivirus interface. When I removed this adapter from Windows 10, my internet started working like it should.
So if you want to remove this TAP driver or TAP Windows Adapter V9, then you can follow these steps:
- Press the hotkey Win+R to open the Run dialog, type devmgmt.msc and press Enter.
- In the Device Manager, locate the TAP adapter from the Network adapters category.
- Right-click on the TAP adapter and select Uninstall device from the menu.
- Select Delete the driver software for this device if you want to remove the drivers for this adapter.
- Click on the Uninstall button and the TAP adapter will be gone.
TAP adapters are virtual networking devices that create a tunnel between your computer and the remote network that provides the VPN services. If you have removed this adapter, your VPN software will fail to create this tunnel and won’t really work without this TAP adapter. If you want to re-install the TAP adapter once again in your Windows PC, then you can download the original VPN software package and use it to re-install the VPN software. You can also use the OpenVPN setup to install the TAP adapter because all the VPN software use the OpenVPN’s drivers. You can download OpenVPN TAP driver files from https://openvpn.net/community-downloads/.