Sky Anytime – Killing Kontiki

I think it’s about time for a good old rant. Nothing to do with Business Intelligence, but…

Anyone out there who uses Sky Anytime (and I believe the BBC iPlayer) will have probably noticed that they use a nasty peer-to-peer file sharing application called Kontiki, which they install automatically without giving you any control over. My problem is that I have a good 8Mb download speed but my upload is still a rather paltry 256K (I know, it’s almost embarrasing). I use Sky Anytime to download a film probably no more than once a month, the rest of the time Kontiki sits there on my PC hogging my precious upload bandwith. They don’t give you any control over restrict it or turning it off – hense my rant.

I’m happy to leave it running for a bit when it’s not causing a problem, but I want to easily be able to turn it off. So, the solution? Create a Kontiki-Killer batch file that disables it. When you next launch Sky Anytime it will automatically load again, but when you’re finished, you can run this batch file to kill the little blighter.

It kills the KHost.exe process, stops the KService service, sets the KService to start manually not automatically (so it will only start when you launch Sky Anytime), and removes KHost.exe from the startup options in the registry (Sky will add them back in when it is next launched).

I use this on my XP Pro SP2 box, I’ve not tried it on any other OS, so I can not accept any responsibility for any problems is may cause – use entirely at your own risk.
Copy this into a blank text file, and save it as KillKontiki.bat

@Echo off
Echo.
Echo.
Echo    Kontiki-Killer...
Echo.    - In progress...
Echo.
Echo    Killing KHost.exe process...
taskkill /IM KHost.exe /T /f
Echo.
Echo    Stopping KService service...
NET Stop KService
Echo.
Echo.   Making the KService service on demand not on startup
sc config KService start= demand
Echo.
Echo    Removing from Registry startup....
REG DELETE HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v kdx /f
REG DELETE HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v kdx /f
Echo.
Echo.
Echo    Kontiki blitz complete.
Echo.
Echo.                                        (C) Purple Frog Systems
Echo.
pause

You can also download it here