Disabling IPv6 Support in Windows Vista
Ipv6 is the latest version of Internet transfer protocols for packet data networks over the internet – the next generation after the popular IPv4. In Vista, Ipv6 capacities are enabled as a default setting along with the supporting technologies of IP Security and Teredo tunneling – both of which are essential for an Ipv6 client. It is not possible to uninstall this application but you can disable it if you want to. Moreover, considering the fact that Ipv6 is not as widespread and that most of the networking devices do not support this technology, it might be a good idea to turn off Ipv6 in your Vista PC to conserve system resources.
Moreover, turning off IPv6 support has no major affect on the Internet browsing of average users. You can disable Ipv6 in either of two ways – via the network management interface, or via the registry. The detailed steps are listed below.
Disabling Ipv6 Support via Network Management Interface
- Click on the Windows button to show the Start Menu and right-click the Network tab. Select Properties.
- On the Tasks pane to the left (in the new dialog that pops up) click on Manage network connections.
- Select the particular network connection for which you want to disable the Ipv6 support by right-clicking on it and then clicking on Properties.
[Hit on Continue at the User Access Control prompt that will pop up.] - A new dialog will show, where you will find a list of items in the This connection uses the following items field. Locate the Internet Protocol version 6 (TCP/IPv6) in this list and deselect the check-box next to it.
- Press OK.
- To turn on IPv6 support again for that particular connection, repeat Steps 1-3, and tick the check-box in Step 4.
Disabling IPv6 via the System Registry
- Open the Registry Editor. Do this by entering regedit in Start Search.
- On the registry tree in the left pane, go to the registry branch corresponding to:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\tcpip6\Parameters\
- Right-click the blank space in the panel to the right and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value. Type in the name of the new DWORD as DisabledComponents (with exact capitalization) and hit Enter.
- Double-click on the newly created DisabledComponents and a new dialog for the DWORD value pops up.
- Set the Base to Hexadecimal on the right and in the Value data field enter 000000FF.
- Restart your PC for the changes to take effect.
If you want to re-activate the IPv6 support then repeat Steps 1-4 and set the Value data in Step 5 to 0.