David’s Musings

Over the last few weeks, I have noticed that my PC has started to really crawl and the internet speed lacking - or even not working. Why was this? I’ve never really had a problem before. I started looking for the Windows services running that I was unsure of, then I found kservice.exe. A quick look at the internet usage kservice.exe was consuming made me suspicious.

A quick search of the interwebnetworksuperhighway showed that this little devil belonged to Kontiki, the service that many VOD services use - and I have installed - such as 4OD, BBC iPlayer and Sky Anytime.

The problem is, this little unit works in a peer-to-peer fashion so that even when you’re not watching, or using the application, it’s trying to share your downloaded files with others. There’s no way to throttle the bandwidth or CPU usage - so your computer dies. Well, mine did anyway. Viewing my bandwidth logs, BBC iPlayer has exchanged around 130MB of data over a 24 hour period. It’s a good job I have an unlimited usage cable broadband account.

So, all of these applications have been uninstalled this evening. But it doesn’t end there - kservice.exe lingered on even when the applications were removed.

To truly uninstall it you need to follow some complicated guidelines. Alternatively, you can use a tool that Sky have hidden in its pages. You can download it here.

All is now ship-shape and Bristol fashion