Windows 10: How to disable WPAD in Windows 11?

Hi,As I followed this thread weeks ago, the WPAD requests are still continuing to 'ping' on the Internet.So, is there an another solution?Thanks a lotGM.

:)

 

Stop WPAD in Windows 11.

Hello,

I am asking for help on how to stop my laptop from sending wpad dns requests. I have a pihole on my network, and the log is littered with wpad requests.

I tried the first couple of techniques in this tutorial but no luck. How to disable Web Proxy Auto-Discovery (WPAD) in Windows 11/10 (thewindowsclub.com)

I disabled netbios and lmhosts in the network adapter. Edited the hosts file per the instructions. Still my dns logs filled with wpad requests. I couldn't figure out how to edit the registry and don't want to totally mess up my laptop.

Stopping the requests is beyond my technical ability. Can someone provide simple guidance or point me to a simple tutorial on how to do this? Thanks.

 

Stop WPAD in Windows 11.

Hello David McC86，

Welcome to Microsoft Community.

In fact, preventing WPAD from sending requests can be solved by changing the registry. I recommend that you change the network adapter Settings back to the default Settings and then follow these steps to modify the registry to prevent WPAD:

1. Please click the search type Regedit on the taskbar and open the registry editor.
   
2. In the address bar go to
   
   
3. In the window on the right of Wpad, right-click and create a dword32 key named WpadOverride and value is 1.
   
4. Then click OK to save and exit, restart the computer and see if there are no more WPAD requests in the network log.
   

Disclaimer: Generally, modifying registry subkeys or work group is intended for advanced users, administrators, and IT Professionals. It can help fix some problems, however, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For further 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 here to view the article.

Your patience and cooperation are highly appreciated. Please feel free to let me know if you have any doubts or updates.

Best Regards,

| Microsoft Community Support Specialist

 

Is it possible to get WPAD working in Windows 11?

Hello,

I have had a support ticket open with Microsoft engineers for over 3 months now and no one seems able to assist me.

I have a pfsense device setup and it is also acting the WPAD supplier for a squid proxy it hosts.

I have WPAD set up by both DNS resolving wpad and wpad.mydomain.com and I also have DHCP option 252 set sending "http://wpad.mydomain.com/wpad.dat" in the DHCP options.

Now this is the interesting thing, if I set the proxy settings to automatic in Windows 11, I would assume it would use the WPAD file right? Well that only seems to be half right.

Edge and other browsers like firefox do indeed use the WPAD file and set the proxy correctly.

However I noticed the Xbox App wouldn't sign in and some other errors and after looking I can see that the WinHTTP service is stating that it is directly connected (not using a proxy).

The WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service is running, and so I thought the whole purpose of that service is to look for WPAD and set up WinHTTP with a proxy based on the wpad.dat file? It seems this is not occuring.

The wpad.dat, proxy.pac and wpad.da files are available via http://wpad/fileneme.ext and http://wpad.mydomain.com/fileneme.ext so there is nothing prohibiting the service from getting the wpad file, it just isn't and/or not setting the proxy for WinHTTP.

The only way I can get the PC to function properly is if I manually set the proxy and then run netsh winhttp import proxy source=ie so that it forces WinHTTP to use the proxy specified in the system settings.

The engineers that Microsoft have sent me to fix the issue don't seem to understand much about networking, I have had to explain basic concepts to them such as how a 404 error because favicon.ico does not exist is not a system error......

Is there anyone that can help? Because Microsoft can't .