Bonjour? Au Revoir.

Lets say you’re using Autoruns one day and the following conditions arise:

• You notice that the Bonjour service has somehow made its way onto your system (usually courtesy of iTunes or Adobe Creative Suite).
• You find yourself incensed that some dodgy and largely unnecessary Apple networking software has installed itself without asking.
• You discover that the Bonjour service in inexplicably absent from Add/Remove Programs, thus further infuriating you over the stealth nature of the install.

Under these conditions, DON’T do what I did and simply delete the references to mDNSResponder.exe and mdnsNSP.dll using Autoruns. All that will get you is a machine that, after its next reboot, can no longer resolve DNS addresses correctly, leading to a short sharp visit to System Restore. Instead, here’s how to remove Bonjour without tanking your network connectivity:

1. Run the following via Start -> Run:"C:\Program Files\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe" -remove
2. Go to the C:\Program Files\Bonjour folder (or C:\Program Files (x86)\Bonjour if you have ended up with a 32-bit version of Bonjour on a 64-bit OS)
3. Rename the mdnsNSP.dll to something else (it doesn’t matter what, my preference is for mdnsNSP.turd)
4. Reboot
5. Delete the aforementioned Bonjour folder from Program Files.

Et voila.