How to disable certain Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) components in Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008

This article describes step-by-step instructions for how to disable certain Microsoft Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) components in Windows Vista. To disable IPv6 components, you must be logged on to the Windows Vista computer as a member of the Administrators group, or your user account must be granted permissions to edit the Windows registry.

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

To disable certain IPv6 components in Windows Vista, follow these steps:

1. Click Start
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   , type regedit in the Start Search box, and then click regedit.exe in the Programs list.
2. In the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
3. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters\
4. Double-click DisabledComponents to modify the DisabledComponents entry.
   
   Note If the DisabledComponents entry is unavailable, you must create it. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. In the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit) Value.
   2. Type DisabledComponents, and then press ENTER.
   3. Double-click DisabledComponents.
5. Type any one of the following values to configure the IPv6 protocol, and then click OK:
   1. Type 0 to enable all IPv6 components.
      
      Note The value "0" is the default setting.
   2. Type 0xffffffff to disable all IPv6 components, except the IPv6 loopback interface. This value also configures Windows Vista to use Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) instead of IPv6 in prefix policies.
   3. Type 0x20 to use IPv4 instead of IPv6 in prefix policies.
   4. Type 0x10 to disable native IPv6 interfaces.
   5. Type 0x01 to disable all tunnel IPv6 interfaces.
   6. Type 0x11 to disable all IPv6 interfaces except for the IPv6 loopback interface.

Note You must restart your computer for these changes to take affect.

Note Administrators must create an ADMX file in order to expose the settings in step 5 in a Group Policy setting.

For more information about how to manage Group Policy settings by using ADMX files, visit the following Microsoft TechNet Web site: For more information about the Windows registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: