Cannot upgrade or uninstall DisplayLink software

This article is to help recover a corrupted DisplayLink installation. Problems that can occur if the installation is corrupted are:
  • The installation of DisplayLink software ended prematurely
  • The installation of DisplayLink software was interrupted
  • You see the message "The older version of DisplayLink Core Software cannot be removed. Contact your technical support group".
  • Unable to find DisplayLinkCore.msi file during an installation
  • Unable to find DisplaylinkUsb.sys file during an installation
  • The installer is trying to upgrade DisplayLink software, rather than install it, even though DisplayLink does not appear in the Windows Programs list
To recover this, the corrupted installation needs to be removed from the computer.
First, please make sure you only have a single user logged in to the computer as the cleaner may not be able to clean files locked by another active user.
This can be done by following the steps below:
  1. Disconnect all hardware using DisplayLink technology.
  2. Download the DisplayLink Installation Cleaner.
  3. The DisplayLink_Installation_Cleaner.exe needs to be run with Administrator permissions. To be sure it runs as Administrator, right click on the DisplayLink_Installation_Cleaner and choose "Run as administrator":
  4. Accept any User Access Control requests
  5. The Cleaner should run in a command prompt. Press Enter to start cleaning:
  6. Once the cleaner has finished, please reboot the computer

After a reboot it should be possible to reinstall the DisplayLink software.

Switches for using DisplayLink Installation Cleaner on Windows

The following switches can be used with the DisplayLink DisplayLink_Installation_Cleaner.exe

  • -silent  : This removes the need for user interaction and can be run using SCCM.

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